Man Finds His Doppelganger in 16th Century Italian Painting

Nov 14, 2012 Source: gma.yahoo.com

What started out as a leisurely stroll through the Philadelphia Museum of Art on Nov. 11 with his girlfriend, quickly turned into quite a surreal experience for Max Galuppo, 20, of Bloomsbury, N.J.

Galuppo, a Temple University student, found his doppelganger in a 16th century Italian painting by an unknown artist titled "Portrait of a Nobleman with Dueling Gauntlet."

"It was really weird. He goes to Temple so we’d been saying for a while we wanted to go to the art museum," his girlfriend, Nikkie Curtis, told ABCNews.com. "We went into the armor exhibit and he loved the helmets. He was completely oblivious to it, and I walked past it and was like, ’Do you see this painting right now? It looks just like you.’"

Although Galuppo’s resemblance to the dark haired, huskily built, bearded face seems obvious to the 735 Reddit users who have commented on the photo since Curtis uploaded it to the site late Sunday night, Galuppo, at first, said he failed to recognize the similarity.

"To be honest, I didn’t see it. I didn’t see the resemblance," Galuppo said. "And then I saw the picture of me next to it, and you can’t deny that."

The couple had no idea the photo would garner so much attention, but is enjoying the humor people are getting out of it. Galuppo has even been propositioned to pose with the portrait, painted in 1562, again, in full matching attire.

"Someone on on Reddit actually offered to make a costume for it. If we could find a costume, he’d be 110 percent behind that idea. He would definitely do it," Curtis said.

Once the photo started swirling around the Internet, Galuppo decided he should probably look into the portrait’s history a bit more, which actually proved quite enlightening to him.

"It’s actually funny because I tried to research the painting as much as I could. There’s not a lot of information from it. The area that the painting is from in Italy, that area is actually where my grandparents are from. I might check out Ancestry.com to see if there’s a relationship," Galuppo said.

The museum acquired the portrait as part of the John G. Johnson collection in 1917.

Article from: yahoo.com