Saturday July 17, 1627, 13:02 – Vlaanderen, Belgium. I stopped in to see Sir Anthony van Dyck (who would be knighted some 5 years later). He had summoned me because of a dream he recently had that he could not interpret. I was dripping from the humidity & rain but I didn’t care because I was too busy marveling at the incredible art I was surrounded by as I waited to meet with him. He finally came in and seemed a bit rushed so we just got down to business (he didn’t even give me a chance to give him the gift). We discussed his dream in great detail and after he helped me reproduce a quick color sketch, his vision became apparent.
It was Paris the Shepherd which was clear to him but the rest made no sense. What was the box surrounding the artwork? And what did the writing mean, and why was there a woman’s finger at the bottom? So I explained that he was looking at a message which was delivered to Helen. It was a self-portrait called a selfie from Paris to her. The finger was Helen’s who had received the image and was looking at it on a futuristic device called a smart phone.
While he did not fully understand all of this the conclusion he came to was that had Paris not sent that selfie to Helen, perhaps the whole Trojan War could have been avoided. This was the inspiration for his painting of Paris in 1628.
