Welcome to the curiously odd world of alien imagery in renaissance paintings. We’re going to start with a few benign ones just to whet our appetites. Here’s a painting called The Annunciation, with Saint Emidius by Carlo Crivelli, completed in 1482.
Notice the strange disc-shaped “cloud” shooting a laser into a young Mary, the soon-to-be mother of Jesus. I think it’s fair to say this is simply the painter’s representation of God’s Spirit moving into her. However, many others say that thing in the sky is clearly an alien craft, meaning the implanting of the child into Mary was alien in origin (sounds somewhat familiar if you read my blog on the Vatican Observatory). Personally, I think that’s a bit of a stretch. You can clearly see the dove in the beam, and the dove typically represents the Holy Spirit. Anyway, I said this was a benign one. The next painting might be too … maybe?
Introducing “The Crucifixion”. It currently resides inside a monastery in Kosovo.
Notice the flying “ships” in each corner. A further closeup reveals a little pilot inside each of them. Now art historians claim these are representations of the Sun and the Moon gods. I can agree that might be a realistic possibility … but why would a Christian painter include other gods? To me, it still looks more like pilots flying spaceships. Anyway, enough of the artwork that can sort of be explained. Here come the fun ones:
This crazy piece of art is known as Israel Put Your Hope in the Lord. It’s believed to be from the 17th century and currently sits in a church in Romania.
Nothing screams “Israel Put Your Hope in the Lord” like a damaged alien ship crashing down onto a burning building. Feel free to post your comments below if you have a better idea of what’s going on.
This next one is actually my favorite. It’s titled Glorification of the Eucharist by Ventura Salimbeni from the 16th century.
At first glance, with its poor image quality, you may not see the issue. But check out the blue sphere at the top … the one that was supposed to be the Earth. Instead, it has an uncanny resemblance to the Russian Sputnik satellite, and hence its nickname, the Sputnik of Montalcino.
Notice the metal plates, the antennas, the eye that looks like a camera, and the reflecting sun. It is incredibly similar—many would argue impossibly so—to Sputnik. When completed, this original version of the painting made the commissioning church furious. They made Salimbeni redo the entire thing, with him actually painting the Earth this time. Both versions can still be seen today.
Here’s a bunch more rapid-fire:
Here’s another disc in the sky shooting down rays of light. Like the first image in this blog, this one seems rather benign. But who knows. Discs and beams seem like an odd way to represent God.
The alien-believing side of me says this one is showing a mothership surrounded by an invasion fleet. Notice how all the ships are flat on top with something like lasers shooting down … or they’re angels. I dunno.
This one is supposed to be about a freak snowfall in Jerusalem. But I’d argue anyone that could paint all those people could certainly make better looking clouds (I think the average first grader could too). So is this actually another fleet of flying saucers hidden in Christian artwork?
Once again we have what appear to be spaceships flying off in both corners (just no little pilots this time).
What’s landing on Earth all around Moses? Are those meteors … or spaceships, yet again?
And our final painting … check out that thing in the sky the guy in the background is staring at. I see no Christian iconography in it at all. That looks, one last time, like an alien spaceship.
I hope you’ve enjoyed this weird and wonderful little tour of aliens in renaissance period’ish art.