It turns out that the existential dread you felt this morning has already been captured in extraordinary detail by painters who existed centuries before the internet existed. History is full of geniuses documenting the human condition in oils and gold leaf, and they had absolutely no idea they were making a canvas for memes for future generations.
The Instagram page @dailyclassicalmemes has made it their mission to unite the old masters with the modern experience, and the results are hilariously accurate. You can find a cherub looking like it has just read its emails and a maiden who knew the perils of modern dating way before things got weird. The art might have changed, but the feelings have been universal for as long as people have been able to document them.
