Life really is mirror art for these people who found their doppelgängers in a gallery

You’ve been tricked! Life really is mirror art for these people who found their doppelgängers hanging on the wall of a gallery

Great works of art have the power to represent thoughts and feelings that any human being can recognize.

But a select few gallery-goers may find the experience too familiar – if they happen to run into their art doppelgänger.

Art lovers around the world have been sharing photos ever since they discovered their likeness in ancient paintings and statues.

From a Renaissance Italian clergyman to a late 19th-century flute player, modern visitors to some of the world’s best-loved museums and galleries have noted a striking resemblance between themselves and the portraits of the past.

“I thought, ‘Wow, that’s really funny, he looks just like me,'” said Ross Duffin, who found his bearded doppelgänger in the form of a 17th-century warrior in a Jan van Bijlert – hanging on the wall of a Pasadena Museum in California.

At the Museum of Fine Arts in San Francisco, a woman found her dead ringer in William-Adolphe Bouguereau’s The Broken Pitcher, which depicts a French peasant girl at a water pump

Contemporary visitors to some of the world's best-loved museums and galleries have discovered a striking resemblance between themselves and the portraits of the past

Contemporary visitors to some of the world’s best-loved museums and galleries have discovered a striking resemblance between themselves and the portraits of the past

A select few gallery-goers may find the experience too familiar - if they happen to run into their art doppelgänger

A select few gallery-goers may find the experience too familiar – if they happen to run into their art doppelgänger

Art lovers around the world have been sharing photos ever since they discovered their likeness in ancient paintings and statues

Art lovers around the world have been sharing photos ever since they discovered their likeness in ancient paintings and statues

'I thought:

“I thought, ‘Wow, that’s really funny, he looks just like me,'” said Ross Duffin, who found his bearded double in the form of a 17th-century warrior

Great works of art have the power to represent thoughts and feelings that any human being can recognize

Great works of art have the power to represent thoughts and feelings that any human being can recognize

A man found his twin brother in a 2,000-year-old portrait of an Egyptian man

A man found his twin brother in a 2,000-year-old portrait of an Egyptian man

Dr. Duffin told the New York Times that his wife, Beverly Simmons, was even more stunned than he was when she made the discovery.

“She came running after me and said, ‘You have to come back and look at this painting!'” At the Museum of Fine Arts in San Francisco, a woman found her dead bell in The Broken Pitcher by William-Adolphe Bouguereau, who was a French farm depicts girl at a water pump.

A man found his twin brother in a 2,000-year-old portrait of an Egyptian man, while a young woman found hers in a Neo-Impressionist portrait of the sister of Belgian artist Georges Lemmen.