{"id":545773,"date":"2026-03-26T05:12:42","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T05:12:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/545773\/"},"modified":"2026-03-26T05:12:42","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T05:12:42","slug":"77-paintings-that-feel-way-ahead-of-their-time-as-shared-by-art-lovers-online","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/545773\/","title":{"rendered":"77 Paintings That Feel Way Ahead Of Their Time, As Shared By Art Lovers Online"},"content":{"rendered":"

Art might be hundreds of years old, but sometimes it feels surprisingly modern. From paintings that look like movie stills to portraits that could easily pass as memes today, people online have been sharing artworks that seem way ahead of their time. And honestly, some of them might just make you do a double take.<\/p>\n

A recent Reddit thread on r\/ArtHistory<\/a> invited people to share old paintings that feel modern or ahead of their time. It didn\u2019t take long for the discussion to go viral, with history and art enthusiasts flooding the comments with mind-blowing examples from different centuries. Some of these pieces really make you feel like you\u2019re looking at something created today.<\/p>\n

You might be surprised too, so don\u2019t waste any more time \u2013 scroll down to check out some of the most fascinating finds from the thread we picked just for you.<\/p>\n

D\u00fcrer’s “Hare” has always looked extremly 18-19th century to me, like Rosa Bonheur’s or George Stubbs’ works, for instance, but no, as you can very much see on the painting, it is actually from the Renaissance.<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Photo: Skeledenn<\/a><\/p>\n

Alex Colville painted this in 1976, but it looks like a low-poly PS1 game render.<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Photo: anacardier<\/a><\/p>\n

Namely for the skull.<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Photo: anglostura<\/a><\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Photo: tzara77<\/a><\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Photo: Ocefeur<\/a><\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Photo: sonnysehra<\/a><\/p>\n

This is a painting of a young woman pointing to a smaller painting of a butt and giggling. Apparently we\u2019ve always been juvenile.<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Photo: admiralsponge1980<\/a><\/p>\n

I saw this in an exhibition recently and it blew me away. Looks so contemporary but it\u2019s Renaissance. Attributed to Pietro Faccini, The head of a youth, c.1590. Royal Collection Trust.<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Photo: RhubarbandCustard12<\/a><\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Photo: Commercial_Hold_9434<\/a><\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Photo: sonnysehra<\/a><\/p>\n

These are drawings rather than paintings, but they’re from the 13th century by a 7-year-old boy named Onfim and look very similar to the drawings kids make today. I don’t think that’s necessarily surprising, but they’re amazing little artifacts that pierce the veil of time and let us see something that feels really human in just how mundane they are. Kids’ drawings are so disposable, it’s wild to see any preserved. And moreover, to recognize 900-year-old doodles as familiar feels incredible to me. I can imagine this kid being so proud of his drawings, showing his family, friends, and neighbors on some regular afternoon in a world so different from ours.<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Photo: huxtiblejones<\/a><\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Photo: Comprehensive_Tea577<\/a><\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Photo: sonnysehra<\/a><\/p>\n

This was made in 1955! A lot of his work looks like early computer graphics, like this one does.<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Photo: lambsinthenight<\/a><\/p>\n

I\u2019m obsessed with this painting I saw at a gallery in Hull, UK.<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Photo:<\/p>\n

Something about her face felt so modern to me that I saved this photo to my phone. How serendipitous to see this post!<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Photo: cloudpulp<\/a><\/p>\n

Alex Colville is one of my favourites \u2013 most of his work has an uncanny photo-realism feel to it, almost like it’s a digital painting or something, even though most of his work was done in the mid-20th century, well before digital images. I’m not experienced with talking about art, so I hope that makes sense. Here is one of his most famous works, ‘Horse and Train’ from 1954. Considered to be one of the most recognizable pieces of Canadian art.<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Photo: jrose125<\/a><\/p>\n

The way Vermeer rendered the buildings in ‘The Little Street’ always made me feel like it’s some real place that exists right now, not 1657. Like one of the many little streets you can still find in European towns today.<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Photo: kehal12<\/a><\/p>\n

She looks like she just came back from the gym.<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Photo: Scoginsbitch<\/a><\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Photo: __G_G__<\/a><\/p>\n

They were attached to the mummies of the people depicted. EDIT: What I like best is that these weren’t post-death portraits; many of the mummies died in old age, and the portraits are all of younger people. These were likely the family portraits they had when younger, like for marriage \/ a special ceremony. I like that these were how people chose to remember them and grieve. Maybe these portraits being entombed with their subjects was part of that process.<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Photo:<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Photo: wormglow<\/a><\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Photo: anacardier<\/a><\/p>\n

1655, artist unknown. Two women wearing fun shaped beauty patches, very similar to the pimple patches worn today. The patches were meant to cover blemishes and scars.<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Photo: Korsorer<\/a><\/p>\n

“Portrait of Bianca degli Utili Maselli and Her Children” by Lavinia Fontana, circa 1604-5. It looks like a modern-day children\u2019s book cover or illustration to me; kinda Brett Helquist-y<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Photo:<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Photo: Ok-Tonight-806<\/a><\/p>\n

I always think Aubrey Beardsley’s illustrations look so 1920s and art deco and they’re about 60 years older than that.<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Photo: electricalgloom<\/a><\/p>\n

I don’t know much about art history, but this one always struck me as too modern (Parmigianino’s “Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror”).<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Photo: motheroflittleneb<\/a><\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Photo: NineteenthJester<\/a><\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Photo: Meatyhelicopter<\/a><\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Photo: hdufort<\/a><\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Photo: BishonenPrincess<\/a><\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Photo: sphinxyhiggins<\/a><\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Photo: Spooky_Donkey<\/a><\/p>\n

This post got me looking into other studies done by Rubens, and several of them look like modern everyday people. For example, this man just looks like some guy trying not to fall asleep while waiting for his number to be called at the DMV.<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Photo: strawb9<\/a><\/p>\n

This painting was made in a time in which we still thought about dinosaurs as slow, dumb animals that dragged their tails on the ground btw.<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Photo: Significant-Spot2596<\/a><\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Photo: cliptemnestra<\/a><\/p>\n

When I saw this in the LA Museum of Art, I could not stop admiring it. And then I read the description: 1888!<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Photo: EffectiveResponse496<\/a><\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Photo: Total_Succotash2478<\/a><\/p>\n

1st century CE. The very first time I saw this fresco from Pompeii in a book when I was a kid, three main things impressed me: 1- there were realistic paintings in the remote time when “Jesus was on earth”, 2- there were still life paintings in that time, and 3- there were glass utensils, and they were represented in art! Plus, the colours and composition looked quite modern to my child eyes. Something similar to Cezanne, but even in his famous paintings combining peaches + pitchers, the pitchers used to be depicted as clay jars (something we used to associate more with Christ period).<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Photo: Renato19702019<\/a><\/p>\n

“The Torment of Saint Anthony” by Michelangelo in 1487 (when he was 12 years old, apparently!). I saw this a few months ago and thought the monsters looked like they could be from some Dungeons and Dragons quest book from the early ’80s or something.<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Photo: nbc0326<\/a><\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Photo: saturninesorbet<\/a><\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Photo: wormglow<\/a><\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Photo: themehboat<\/a><\/p>\n

Johannes Gumpp\u2019s self-portrait from 1646 just seemed like such a meta piece for its time.<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Photo: baesoonist<\/a><\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Photo: HRH_MQ<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2018Ehon mizu ya sora\u2019 (\u201cPicture Book of Water and Sky\u201d), published in 1780 and illustrated by the Osaka artist known as Nich\u014dsai. The book caricatures famous kabuki actors from Osaka, Kyoto, and Edo (Tokyo), depicting them on stage in a minimalist and humorous manner exemplary of the \u2018toba-e\u2019 style.<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Photo: chris_alf<\/a><\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Photo: Western-Special6416<\/a><\/p>\n

Anything by William Blake. All of it looks like it should be from the 20th century. This is from 1794, somehow.<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Photo: Shoddy_Blacksmith480<\/a><\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Photo: sonnysehra<\/a><\/p>\n

Yeah, it’s quite insane how modern it feels.<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Photo: Comprehensive_Tea577<\/a><\/p>\n

Anguissola\u2019s sibling painting. Late 16th century. Besides their clothes, this looks so contemporary, and I don\u2019t really know why.<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Photo: aliummilk<\/a><\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Photo: RomaniRye<\/a><\/p>\n

He would become the main inspiration for Magritte\u2019s early works<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Photo: MijanHRD<\/a><\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Photo: morbid_rabbit<\/a><\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Photo: Aelinith<\/a><\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Photo: Pawneewafflesarelife<\/a><\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Photo: droopsofwoe<\/a><\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Photo: godzillainaneckbrace<\/a><\/p>\n

I find that a lot of Henry Ossawa Tanner’s works read like this to me (here ‘The Annunciation’ (1898) at the Philadelphia Museum of Art). His religious scenes often depict non-traditional relationships between the human and divine. In ‘The Annunciation,’ Gabriel is a bolt of light rather than a fully formed angel. His ‘Mary’ and ‘La Sainte Marie’ also seem very modern. As a Philadelphian, it always makes me proud to think of Tanner and see his works in collections worldwide. Unfortunately, he left Philly for Paris due to antebellum racism, but became the first black artist to medal at the Salon and was elected Chevalier of the Legion of Honor in 1923!<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Photo: catullusallust<\/a><\/p>\n

Okay, it’s D\u00fcrer, but his radical approach to painting his own nude body is what makes him modern. To me, it has a lot of expressionistic vibes.<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Photo: Call_me_Maurice71<\/a><\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Photo: Comprehensive_Tea577<\/a><\/p>\n

Hilma Af Klint was way ahead of her time!<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Photo: BeefQueef_69<\/a><\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Photo: Old_Entrepreneur9439<\/a><\/p>\n

This guy from c. 1520 (Marx Reichlich). He looks like David from my high school Spanish class.<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Photo:<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Photo: Uno_zanni<\/a><\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Photo: Comprehensive_Tea577<\/a><\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Photo: therealsteelydan<\/a><\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Photo: Whyte_Dynamyte<\/a><\/p>\n

Everything by Hilma af Klint. Like this 1908 painting.<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Photo: Molu93<\/a><\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Photo: Comprehensive_Tea577<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cGirl at the Piano: Recording Sound,\u201d 1935, by Theodore Roszak always struck me as futuristic for the \u201930s. Something about the line work? What do you think?<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Photo: mwelch21<\/a><\/p>\n

The use of colour in this portrait of the Kangxi emperor from 1699 always felt so modern to me somehow.<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Photo: melymn<\/a><\/p>\n

Modigliani. This is from 1909. Looks like something from the 1980s to me.<\/p>\n

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\u00a9 Photo: bigscientist<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Art might be hundreds of years old, but sometimes it feels surprisingly modern. From paintings that look like…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":545774,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[243542,228,226,227,229,88,243543,22335],"class_list":{"0":"post-545773","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-alex-colville","9":"tag-arts","10":"tag-arts-and-design","11":"tag-artsanddesign","12":"tag-design","13":"tag-entertainment","14":"tag-hans-holbein-the-younger","15":"tag-photo"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545773","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=545773"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/545773\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/545774"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=545773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=545773"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=545773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}