We bet you were just dying to see van Hoytl's masterpiece. You probably couldn't wait for Gustave to show it to Zero in the upper rooms of the Desgoffe estate. Both Gustave and Dmitri's reactions to hearing the willing of Boy with Apple to the concierge are enough to make us swoon at the anticipation of seeing what we assumed would be the most marvelous painting in art history.

The joke's on you, Shmooper: By the time you were waiting with bated breath to clap eyes on this mysterious boy and his mysterious apple, you'd… already seen it. As you may have noticed if watching The Grand Budapest the second time through, Boy with Apple appears in two other places in the 1968 storyline: on the wall behind the concierge desk where we see M. Jean, and on the back of the menu Mustafa holds as he orders in the Budapest dining room.

What exactly does Boy with Apple symbolize? Like The Grand Budapest Hotel itself, there are layers when it comes to the symbolic heft of this painting. In 1968, it symbolizes the lack of appreciation for art and culture of the past—this valuable art piece is now relegated to a mere hotel decoration.

The people who stay at the Grand Budapest circa 1968 are probably a lot like the viewers of the movie—when we first see Boy With Apple, we think, at most: "Ooh. Neat." When some Central European hotel guest sees it, we can't imagine that many of them are bowled over. (Maybe every now and then a grandmother will pause and comment on how that boy holding the apple looks just like her twelve-year-old grandson.)

However, when Boy With Apple was in its prime it was a masterpiece; everything compared to it was "worthless s***." This makes the painting comparable to the hotel itself: In its heyday The Grand Budapest is a magnificent resort.

Wait, though: There's more. Not only is Boy With Apple a symbol of the lack of reverence shown to the past and a symbol of The Grand Budapest's decline, it's also a symbol of… M. Gustave.

M. Gustave is a fussy middle-aged man. He's a common dude who has elevated himself to the position of a dandy and a gentleman… and the ladies love him for it. In fact, they love him so much that Madame D. think she sees a resemblance between M. Gustave and the young lad in Boy With Apple.

Was Madame D. going blind? No, probably not, but she was maybe a little delusional. M. Gustave made her feel young again, and so she compared him in her mind with a fresh-faced young boy holding a Biblical symbol of innocence—an untasted apple.