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AROUND THE WORLD, MILLIONS OF PEOPLEbelieve that alien spacecraft routinely visit ourplanet.1 This belief has been fueled by 60 yearsof reported UFO sightings and thousands ofanecdotal claims. A growing number of print2

and web3 sources argue that there is solid docu-mentary proof that UFOs have been visiting usfor hundreds of years, painted into the skies ofthe European art of centuries past.

While it’s true that some pretty strange thingsappear in the backgrounds of old paintings, theyonly look odd to modern viewers. A workingknowledge of the complex artistic and symbolicconventions used by Classical, Medieval, orRenaissance painters reveals that these strangedetails meant something quite different to theartists who painted them, and the audience theypainted for. A painting’s place in history influ-ences how objects in it are depicted, and thatcontextual information is necessary to correctlyidentify those objects. Regrettably, the authorswho have discovered alleged UFOs in old paint-ings have little knowledge of the meaning orcontext of the items which they have selected ascandidates for alien spacecraft.

Strangely enough, one of the motives forseeking UFOs in old paintings was a particularobservation about which skeptics and UFOenthusiasts partially agreed. Skeptics have longfound it suspicious that thousands of UFOsapparently started arriving only after the adventof science fiction.

This is hardly the most devastating or scientificcriticism of belief in UFOs, but it certainly makesa valid point: once people started to write aboutfictional alien spacecraft, people suddenly beganto see them.

Some UFOlogists also felt uneasy about thiscoincidence. If the “alien spaceship” hypothesisis correct, surely there would have been UFOs inour skies before science fiction writers startedimagining aliens; and, if they’ve been visiting usfor centuries, historical records of extraterrestrialspacecraft should exist. After all, people havebeen watching the skies for a very long time.

So, where’s the evidence of pre-Sci-Fi visita-tions? Where are the accounts of saucers seen bymedieval peasants, or of vast silvery disks hover-ing over Roman garrisons? The truth is, there areno historical records of anything matching the

The Art Of Imagining UFOs

The Search for Images Of Spaceships In European Paintings Provides AnImportant Lesson For All Paranormal Enthusiasts—Do Your Homework

D I E G O C U O G H I

Edited by Daniel Loxton. Translation by Daniela Cisi and Leonardo Serni

“Meanwhile the average man had become progressively less able to recognize the subjects or under-stand the meaning of the works of art of the past. Fewer people had read the classics of Greek andRoman literature, and relatively few people read the Bible with the same diligence that their parentshad done. It comes as a shock to an elderly man to find how many biblical references have becomecompletely incomprehensible to the present generation.”

—Kenneth Clark, introduction to Dictionary of Subjects and Symbols in Art by James Hall.

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1.Adorationof the Extraterrestrials

descriptions of modern UFOs.4 This has prompt-ed many UFOlogists to comb through ancientsources for obscure or hidden signs of premod-ern UFOs. Perhaps, they reason, ancientobservers, lacking the conceptual frameworkprovided by modern science (and science fic-tion) actually did record spacecraft sightings—butwithout understanding what they were seeing.

As Skeptic readers know, there is now adecades-long tradition of pseudo-historicalresearch devoted to uncovering cryptic signs ofalien “ancient astronauts” in the records, monu-ments, and artwork of ancient cultures (Egyptian,Aztec, and so on). Since the 1970s, many havebeen convinced (by writers such as AndrewTomas or Erich von Däniken) that ancient, lost,or non-European cultures did record prehistoriccontact with aliens. If, as these “paleo-astronau-tic” theorists imagine, aliens have visited here formillennia, and if they were recorded by ancientnon-European cultures, isn’t it reasonable tohypothesize that similar evidence of their pres-ence should also be contained in the art ofEuropean societies as well?

Although the idea is reasonable enough, theconclusions they have drawn so far have beenseriously flawed.

The ArtA virtual cottage industry has emerged on theInternet to showcase and discuss the many UFOsthat have been “discovered” in the works oflong-dead painters. In one sense, the authors ofthese sites are correct: if you search the back-grounds of enough old paintings saucer-likeobjects can be found. Some examples areextremely convincing, even to a skeptical eye.

A quick comparison of UFO websites revealsthat the images offered are generally the sameones. Once a new image appears on one site,the others immediately pick it up, usually withthe commentary that goes along with it.

For web surfers with even a little knowledgeof art history, the first impression of these sites isthat a very simplistic methodology was used tocompile them. To all appearances, the standardpractice is simply this: pick up an art book,preferably one dealing with work from the 17th-century or earlier (religious art is favored becauseit is crowded with odd objects). Browse throughthe book for any strange detail with a circular,

ellipsoid or saucer-like shape. That’s it. This sys-tem obviously makes it quite easy to discoverpuzzling objects and declare them “alien” or“unidentified” without bothering to consider whatthey might have symbolized in the period inwhich they appear.

It’s clearly foolish to publish anything (evenon the web) on subjects one knows nothingabout. These authors err not just because theymisinterpret the symbolism, but because theydon’t even realize that it’s symbolism they’relooking at. The visual vocabularies they are puz-zling over are centuries (or even millennia) old.Those archaic iconographic vocabularies are nomore familiar in the TV age than is Homer’sGreek or Virgil’s Latin. We shouldn’t be too hardon UFOlogists for their mistakes in this unfamiliararena, perhaps, but we should feel free todebunk their poorly founded claims.

Another misunderstanding of these web UFOsearchers is presuming that the social role of theartist back then was the same as it is today.Authors frequently make the anachronisticassumption that the artists who executed theseexpensive, commissioned paintings had thepower or license to add details as they chose. It’sa mistake to think that religious painters of, say,the 15th-century, were free to record events theyhad personally witnessed, or that they wouldhave been allowed to add any non-canonical orun-codified elements whatsoever.

The idea that artists should freely expressthemselves in their work is a completely modernone. In past times, the patrons who choose thesubject and supervised the execution of the art-work (in these cases, religious institutions orpowerful nobility) would never have allowedartists to insert stray elements from outside ofpreviously established conventions—especially inthe case of religious subjects. Artists were, inthose times, skilled workers who were paid todo things in the prescribed way, and only thatway; they could no more insert flying saucersinto their commissions than your lawyer can addjokes or personal commentary to your will. Evenfor master painters, tinkering with the schematicconventions of their times could have been dan-gerous. Personal editorializing would have beena publicly scandalous affront to their patrons(who frequently held the powers of life anddeath, in addition to controlling the prosperity ofartists).5

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Carlo Crivelli, Annunciazione (1486).Anyone familiar with 15th-century religious

painting will find it absurd that the authors ofsome UFOlogy web sites are astonished by theobject in the sky of the Annunciation by CarloCrivelli (now at the National Gallery of London).

What they consider most surprising is the factthat there is a ray of light coming down from this“flying object” to touch the head of the VirginMary. This ray, it is claimed, comes from asaucer-like UFO hovering among the clouds.Unfortunately, casual web surfers will find thatposted reproductions of the key detail (the“saucer,” actually a circle of clouds in the sky) aresmall, blurred, or pixilated to the point of beingindecipherable. (No one seems to have searchedfor a better reproduction, and identical poor-qual-ity versions continue to spread from site to site).

On the Edicolaweb site,6 the commentary isquite restrained: “Painting by Carlo Crivelli,known as The Annunciation, shown at theNational Gallery of London. In the sky hovers alarge, bright circle, from which a beam of lightdescends, reaching the crown worn by Mary.”

By contrast, a site called The UFOs ofCrivelli 7 gets right to the point: “What mostattracts our attention is the peculiarity of thecloud shape: indeed it appears to be quite solid,with a circular structure, and clearly differentfrom any other cloud surrounding it. It may beeither the sun circle (direct emanation of thedivine energy) or an object really seen and thusrepresented by Crivelli himself. As evidence ofthis latter hypothesis stands the ‘thickness’ of theobject, which is not an abstract entity: in additionthe resemblance of the ‘cloud’ to a UFO recentlyseen in Veneto [a northern region of Italy] inJanuary 1999 is clear. The reader may judge forhimself.” Of course, the reader can’t judge with-out a sharp detail of the cloud, but the blowup

provided is of even lower quality than is typical.Had those publishing this claim bothered to

become familiar with the art of the period, theywould know that there are a vast number ofAnnunciations in which a ray reaches from a cir-cular cloud to the head of the Madonna. Thisscene is, like most religious scenes, an establishedgenre rendered in similar ways many times bymany people. These various Annunciations speaka specialized iconographic language that modernviewers no longer understand.

For example, the Crivelli painting representsdivine power in a very common way: an objectin the sky, formed by a radiant circle of cloudscontaining two circles of small angels. In close-up, individual angels are clearly visible, peekingtheir little heads and golden wings out over theclouds on which they sit. This same cloud-with-rings-of-angels device is used in Annunciations byLuca Signorelli, Pietro Alamanno, and others (aswell as in many Medieval and Renaissance paint-ings of related subject matter) to depict the pres-ence of God. Sometimes this device is a smalldetail, an anchor at the divine end of a threadthat connects a holy person to God; at othertimes it is the central image, a vast vortex ofheavenly power.

If the beam emanating from the radiant cloudin Crivelli’s painting were actually intended to rep-resent the action of a technological device—a StarTrek transporter, perhaps, or some sort of lasercommunications system—it would seemextremely odd that this advanced technology wasemployed, apparently, for the purpose of beaminga bird onto the head of the Virgin. In the contextof Christian religious iconography the little whitebird is far less bizarre. In fact, painters routinelyplaced doves in such beams of light, with thesedoves representing the Holy Spirit and divineguidance descending to the blessed contactee.

ExamplesOddly, a striking failure of this UFOlogical fishing trip is the relatively small number of examples ithas managed to net. At this point, one may be forgiven for wondering whether these authors, in thecourse of their investigations, ever actually entered a museum or a church. If they had, they wouldhave been astonished to discover the staggering array of strange objects depicted in old paintings,statues, and other works of art!

So, what exactly is it that these web sites are showcasing? What does art history have to say aboutthe discovery of UFOs in centuries-old paintings? Here are four examples. I include a critique of eachone to illustrate the shortcomings of their reasoning.

1.The Adoration of the Extraterrestrials

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The practice of representing the Holy Spirit as a dove isfamiliar to Christians; indeed, it predates the word“Christian.” For example, the oldest of the New TestamentGospels, Mark, recounts that at his baptism, Jesus saw “theheavens opened and the Spirit descending upon him like adove.”8 Today, American churches and chapels are com-monly named “Holy Dove,” and the tradition thrives world-wide in both visual art and hymns.

In high-resolution reproductions, the identity ofCrivelli’s “UFO” is clear, but UFOlogy sites typically offer

only hazy, ambiguous, low-resolution smudges. Crivellino more saw a UFO with his own eyes than cartoonistssee clouds emerging from people’s heads when theyare thinking; in both cases, these artists simply utilizedestablished conventions for representing abstract ornon-visual concepts. The only mysteries here are whysome UFOlogists are so quick to leap to unwarrantedconclusions, and so slow to provide their readers withthe information needed to honestly evaluate the “evi-dence.”

Madonna Col Bambino eSan Giovannino (end of 15th cen-tury). (Madonna and Child with the Infant Saint John.)Attributed to Sebastiano Mainardi or Jacopo del Sellaio. TheMadonna and Child with the Infant St. John, on display inthe Sala d’Ercole in Palazzo Vecchio, Florence, has beenattributed to at least three painters active in Florence at theend of the 1400s. For convenience we’ll refer to this as awork by the general favorite, Sebastiano Mainardi.9

This painting has excited UFOlogists more than anyother. Many see proof of a “close encounter” with a UFO inthe upper-right background behind the Madonna. In thedepiction, a far-off character shields his eyes while behold-ing an apparition in the sky (his dog is equally interested).

Daniele Bedini writes in Notiziario UFO,10 “We clearlysee the presence of an airborne object, leaden in colorand inclined to port, sporting a ‘dome’ or ‘turret,’ appar-ently identifiable as an oval-shaped moving flying device.”

Once again, with a few keystrokes, a radiant cloudpainted half a millennium ago has become a flying saucer.But this odd cloud is not the only peculiarity of the paint-ing: to the upper left, we see the Nativity Star with threeother small stars (or perhaps flames) below it. These par-ticulars—three clustered stars, a luminous cloud—tell usthat this painting follows an ancient iconography, an aus-tere and rigid way for interpreting not only sacred subjectsbut also city life itself.

When this work was created, Florence was under thetheocratic sway of the infamous Fra’ (‘Brother’) GirolamoSavonarola. This passionate fire-and-brimstone monk hadgained great popular influence with his powerful, persua-sive sermons linking the corruption he saw in the rulingFlorentine Medici family with the coming judgment fore-told in the Book of Revelation. Like many people through-out history, Savonarola believed that greed, decadence,and immorality were destroying his society (and hischurch), and he called forcefully for a return to traditionalCatholic values. When, under the pressure of an advancing

French invasion the Medici family was eventually drivenout, Florence declared itself a Republic—with Christ him-self as titular king. Although Savonarola had no officialpolitical power in this new Republic, his opinions were theauthoritative foundation for a Florence reinvented withboth civil law and social norms based on Christian ideolo-gy. The resulting theocratic state featured pervasive surveil-lance of the people and control over their everyday lives(one could draw parallels with the modern fundamentalistsof Ayatollah Khomeini’s Islamic Republic of Iran).

Under the grip of both popular religious fervor and atheocratic regime, Florentines, while pursuing their cultur-al revolution, invented a famous expression that still res-onates today: the so-called “bonfires of the vanities.” Inthese huge street fires, symbols of the degenerate corrup-tion associated with the old Florence were gathered andpublicly burned. Gambling paraphernalia (like cards anddice) were fed to the flames along with symbols of mate-rial greed (wigs and fineries, together with trinkets andbaubles), and symbols of moral decadence—‘obscene’books, art, and precious objects.

Savonarola fell from grace within a few years, havingangered both the Vatican and the people of Florence.Ultimately he was captured by a mob, arrested, tried, tor-tured, hanged, and then burned for good measure. Soon,after ascending to the Papal throne in Rome, the Medicifamily returned to power in Florence as well.

During the Savonarola years, the dangerous culturalatmosphere of suspicion and condemnation born fromhis preaching greatly influenced the work of artists.Several, including Sandro Botticelli (whose patrons hadbeen the Medici family), soon denounced their own ear-lier work as heathen, and proclaimed themselves readyto represent mystical subjects in a “purer” (but also morerigid, archaic and didactic) style. Others, like Florentinesculptor Michelangelo (another Medici-affiliated artist),

2. The Shepherd’s Vision

2.The Shepherd’s Vision

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simply fled the city.Rejecting the “degenerate” artistic practices

that had emerged from the humanism and Neo-Platonism popular among the Medici circles,Mainardi’s Madonna reflected the reactionarytrend to return to older, safer iconographic con-ventions.11 For example, three stars often appearin the paintings of the previous century, and infar earlier Byzantine icons of the Madonna.Often, these stars are painted on her veil, on hershoulders, or on her forehead. Sometimes threerays stand in for the stars, but by any variant theyrepresent the “threefold virginity” of theMadonna (i.e. before, during, and after the virginbirth).

Despite extraterrestrial speculations, Mainardi’s“UFO” is actually an element found in a great manyNativities of the 1400 and 1500s: the announce–ment to the shepherds, as told in the Gospel of St.Luke: “And an angel of the Lord appeared tothem, and the glory of the Lord shone aroundabout them: and they were filled with fear. Andthe angel said to them, ‘Be not afraid; for behold,I bring you good news of a great joy.’”12

Elements of Mainardi’s Madonna are foundin many other paintings of the Nativity or theAdoration of the Child (by artists such as Foppa,Pinturicchio, Aspertini, Di Credi, Bronzino, Luini,Ghirlandaio, Van Der Goes, and so on). Each ofthese includes the same angelic visitation scene—either a luminous cloud, or an angelic figure,or an angelic figure emerging from a luminouscloud. In almost all versions, a lone shepherdholds a hand to his forehead, as if shielding hiseyes from the shining “glory of the Lord”described by Luke. Often, the shepherd’s dogalso marvels at the apparition.

It’s clear that Mainardi’s “UFO sighting” scenecan be confidently identified as the then-standardannouncement scene. But one might wonder,since there is no specific mention of “luminousclouds” in Luke, where did this particular con-vention come from?

Renaissance sacred art took scenes not onlyfrom the four canonical Gospels, but also fromapocryphal sources and contemporary devotionaltexts containing popular characters. We oweGiotto’s Mary’s Presentation to the Temple (or TheVirgin’s Wedding), the encounter between Jesusas a child and St. John the Baptist by Leonardo,and other favorites to sources extraneous to thecanonical Gospels of Mark, Matthew, Luke or

John. Painters (and their employers, who chosethe subjects) also routinely mixed scenes and sit-uations from heterogeneous texts.

One of the apocryphal gospels most heavilydrawn on by artists of this period was James’Protogospel, which features a description of theNativity in which no angels appear. Instead, acloud of light attends the birth: “…and behold! aluminous cloud over-shadowed the cave. Andthe mid-wife said: ‘My soul has been magnifiedthis day, because mine eyes have seen wondrousthings: that salvation has been brought forth toIsrael.’ And immediately the cloud disappearedout of the cave, and such a great light shone inthe cave that the eyes could not bear it.”13

While Luke merely notes, “and the glory ofthe Lord shone round about them,” the author ofJames’ Protogospel adds that, “the eyes could notbear it.” And behold! Most paintings illustrate theannouncement scene with the shepherd shield-ing his eyes. In the case of Mainardi’s Madonna,the angel is depicted as in this apocryphalGospel: a luminous cloud. This was hardly aninnovation.

Discussing angel iconography, MarcoBussagli’s History of Angels14 quotes the 5th-century mystic Pseudo-Dionysus: “The HolyScriptures represent [angels] in the form of cloudsto indicate that the holy entities are filled with ahidden light in an above-mundane way.” In thecatalogue of Wings of God, Bussagli writes, “Allthings considered, the Middle Ages turned out tobe a central period for the development of theAngelic iconography, whose solutions were to bere-interpreted in a markedly naturalistic way bythe later cultures of the Renaissance and theBaroque. Such is the case of the ‘Cloud Angels’that would be later propounded as winged fig-ures over soft cushions of vapor.”15

We can, then, firmly link Mainardi’s Madonnato political events and iconographic traditionsreigning at the end of the 1400s in Florence, butnot to alien spacecraft. The three smaller starsunder the great Nativity Star are symbols of thetriple virginity of Mary (before, during and afterchildbirth); the shepherd with his hand on hisforehead is a standard detail found in dozens ofNativity or Adoration paintings of the same age;and the luminous cloud, symbolic of God’sglory expressed through his angelic agents,comes from the narration of the nativity in theProtogospel of James.

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Il Miracolo Della Neve (c. 1428). Masolino daPanicale. (Napoli, Museo Nazionale diCapodimonte.) Promoted in the Italian presssince the early 1970s, this is one of the mostcommonly cited “UFOlogic paintings.”16

Illustrating a 13th-century legend regarding analleged 4th-century supernatural event, Masolinoda Panicale (a.k.a. Tommaso di Cristoforo Fini)painted The Miracle of the Snow as the centralpanel for an altarpiece triptych for the church ofSanta Maria Maggiore in Rome around 1428. Aweb author summarizes the legend:

According to historical tradition, Pope Liberius wasordered by Angels to construct a new church in theexact place where miraculous snowing would soonbe manifested. The day after, a strange substancesimilar to snow fell from the sky in one warm dayof August. The phenomenon was limited to the sin-gle zone of Rome in which was then constructedthe basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore…. What wasthe cause of this impossible snowing? Masolinofrom Panicale, in his painting, represents a detailedscene of the event, with snow falling from a ‘largeand lengthened cloud,’ grayish and with the shapeof a cigar. Under this cloud are many other smallerclouds. Careful examination of these reveals thatthey do not seem like normal clouds. They are, infact, all clearly delineated in their contours and notvaporous, and are represented in identical pairswith only the upper portion illuminated, as aremany ‘flying saucers.17

Although this modern UFOlogical retellingrefers to a “strange substance similar to snow,”the original legend speaks of literal snow fallingon Rome miraculously in August of the year 352CE. According to the legend, apparently first toldby Fra Bartolomeo from Trento in the first half of13th-century in the Liber Epilogorum in GestaSanctorum,

…in the morning…the inhabitants of the Esquilinehill got a strange surprise: during the night snowhad fallen, and a soft mantle of it covered the soil.With such a miracle the Virgin Mary indicated to anoble called Giovanni and his wife that she wanteda shrine built there in her honor. For a long timethe old couple, who had no sons, had desired toemploy their riches in a work that honored theMother of God and, to such an aim, prayed with

fervor so great that she showed them the way inwhich they could fulfill their wish. The Virginappeared to them in a dream, telling them to builda church dedicated to Mary in the place where thefollowing morning would reveal that snow had fall-en miraculously during the night. Astonished by themiracle, the couple went to Pope Liberius, to tellhim what happened; but the pope had, during thenight, dreamed the same thing! Liberius, followedby Giovanni and a crowd, went up the Esquilinehill and found that the still intact snow marked theoutline of the new church—which was soon con-structed at the expense of Giovanni and his wife.18

Historically, things seem to have happeneddifferently. The foundation of the basilica ofSanta Maria Maggiore on the Esquiline hill wasactually laid during the reign of Pope Sixtus III inthe middle of the 5th-century. It was the firstchurch dedicated to the Virgin Mary (officiallydefined as the “Mother of God” in Ephesus in431 CE by the Third Ecumenical Council).Esquiline may have been chosen in order toeliminate the old pagan cult of Juno Lucina19 (aRoman goddess associated with light and child-birth), which had a temple on the same hill.

Because the Miracle of the Snow capturedthe popular imagination, many artists representedthe scene (and various churches dedicated to theMadonna of the Snow were constructed else-where in Italy). In Florence we find the miraclerepresented in a fresco in the church of SantaFelicita, and in a 14th-century stained-glass win-dow in the palace of Orsanmichele.

As far as we know, the story was first narrateda millennium after the legendary event. Anothercentury passed before Masolino painted the mira-cle scene with those strange “UFO-clouds.” Buthow unusual really are those clouds in the contextof 15th-century art? Not unusual at all, it turns out,because Masolino painted similar clouds in otherprojects, including a Madonna with Child. Otherpainters of the time, including Benozzo Gozzoli,also represented clouds in the same stylized way.

Obviously, these clouds are schematically styl-ized, and aspire to less realism than earlier sacredart from the first half of 15th-century; equallyobviously, they are still clouds. Here, realism isset aside in favor of simplicity, but most audienceshave no trouble identifying the cloud elements

3. Unidentified Fluffy Objects

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correctly. Admittedly, these clouds do somewhat resemble mod-ern flying saucer images, but this was no more the intent ofMasolino than of his contemporaries who used the same con-vention. The major cloud element aids our identification of theobject as a cloud, if any aid is needed, with its billowy, franklycloud-like upper surface. And, the simplified (but nonethelessobvious) amorphous asymmetry of the other clouds confirmsthat these are not meant by the painter to be similar technologi-cal artifacts. It may be worth pointing out that we have no rea-son whatsoever to suspect that Masolino ever personally saw aflying saucer, a giant Jesus gesturing from a gargantuan medal-lion in the sky, or, for that matter, a sky made from gold leaf.

The snow legend itself could, conceivably, have been a oral-historical record of a real atmospheric occurrence. Independentaccounts indicate that while snow in Rome during Augustwould certainly have been extraordinary, it could actually havehappened. Exceptional atmospheric events of this kind havebeen recorded more recently. For example, in June of 1491snow piled up to a foot high in Bologna. Three days later, snowcovered Ferrara as well. Snow is documented to have fallen onthe coasts of the Calabria in May of 1755, and in Lunigiana inJuly of 1756. Prato is a fine modern example of a city whitenedin August: in 2000 it became covered in hail (in certain points,almost 30cm deep).

It’s not impossible, therefore, that such an extraordinary eventcould have occurred. Distant memories, passed along orally forcenturies, picking up rich legendary details could have eventuallytransformed into the “Miracle of the Snow.”

Whether the legend is “true” in this sense is beside the point.For our purposes, it is sufficient to conclude that Masolino illus-trated a then-current legendary narrative, according to main-stream conventions of his time, at a church whose miraculousfoundation was the subject of that very tale. There is no reasonto speculate that he personally witnessed an alien invasion, andno way that he could have witnessed the original “miraculous”event (if it ever occurred); further, there’s no hint anywhere thatthe original legend recorded either alien contact or the sightingof UFOs.

Other examples abound, and many of them are decidedly weird.Of these, the most amusing might easily be the “UFO” identifiedin Paolo Uccello’s Scene di Vita Eremitica (Scenes of MonasticLife), circa 1460-1465.20 That UFO is, no doubt, a large red hat.

The painting is a montage of various key scenes of monasticlife: at the bottom left, the Virgin appears to St. Bernard; above,a group of monks flagellate themselves in front of the Crucifix;at the bottom right, a saint (probably St. Romuald) preaches;while at the top, St. Francis kneels down and receives theStigmata. In the middle, in a large cave, St. Jerome prays beforethe crucified Christ. Beside him is his hat.

4.The Crimson Disk

In 1964, theabove images were

“discovered” by art student Alexandar Paunovitch in a 16th-century fresco of the crucifixionof Christ, located on the wall of the Visoki DecaniMonastery in Kosovo, Yugoslavia. The Frenchmagazine Spoutnik printed them, and they havebeen featured in many books and web pages eversince as “spaceships with a crew.”

While a layperson might be completely mystifiedby these suggestive images, a Medieval art historianwould only need to know that they were located inthe upper corners of a depiction of Christ’s crucifixionto identify them.

Many crucifixion paintings and mosaics done inthe Byzantine style show the same odd “objects”on either side of the cross. They are the Sun andthe Moon, often represented with a human faceor figure, a common iconographic tradition in theart of the Middle Ages.

James Hall, author of the Dictionary of Subjects& Symbols In Art writes:

“The sun and moon, one on each side of the cross,are a regular feature of Medieval crucifixion [paint-ings]. They survived into the early Renaissance butare seldom seen after the 15th century. Their originis very ancient. It was the custom to represent theSun and Moon in images of the pagan sun gods ofPersia and Greece, a practice that was carried overinto Roman times on coins depicting the emperors.

…[T]he sun is [sometimes represented as] simplya man’s bust with a radiant halo, the moon [as] awoman’s, with the crescent of Diana. Later they arereduced to two plain disks. The moon having a crescentwithin the circle, may be borne by angels. The sunappears on Christ’s right, the moon on his left.”

The Sun and Moon are depicted as anythingfrom a flat disk to a hollow comet-tailed ball. Thefigures within vary from a simple face to elaboratedepictions of Apollo and Diana in their chariotsdriving horses or oxen. The Sun and Moon are alsofeatured on crucifixions painted by Dürer, Crivelli,Raphael, and Bramantino.___________________________________________________________________For crucifixion paintings featuring the Sun and Moon, and moreexamples of UFOs in art not covered in this article go to:

www.sprezzatura.it/Arte/Arte_UFO.htm

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According to one author on a UFOlogy site, this “is asaucer object, suspended in the air and surmounted by ared domed top. Red in color, the object comes out over thedark background by contrast. The dynamic movement ofthe flying object is rendered by means of light brushstrokes, again red in color, which provide the effect of asudden turn.”21

But the object is plausible as a saucer only if our viewis restricted to a small section of the painting. Viewing theentire painting makes clear that the “saucer object” is locat-ed inside the cave, on the ground beneath the crucifix,beside the kneeling St. Jerome. It is also clearly quite small.

At this point, most Catholics, and many people witheven minimal knowledge of art history should easily recog-nize this red object as a traditional Catholic cardinal’s hat—red, rounded, broad-brimmed, and trailing tasseled cords.

According to tradition, St. Jerome became an eremite (ahermitic monk) after renouncing his ecclesiastic career. Bythe time of Uccello, Jerome was a standard subject of reli-gious art, and standard ways of presenting him hadevolved. “According to one of the most common icono-graphical modules, Jerome in the desert flagellates his chestwith a stone while kneeling down in front of a Crucifix.”22

In this iconographic scheme (one of three or so main typesfor this saint), Jerome “is represented as an elderly manwith white hair and beard, his cardinal hat close tohim…As a penitent, dressed with skins or poor garments.”23

The small animal Uccello places with the saint is actual-

ly a lion. According to an archetypical legend, Jerome savedand then tamed a wild lion by extracting a thorn from itspaw.24 Despite widespread association of a tamed lion withSt. Jerome in art and tradition, many web sites promotingUFOs continue to quote an article by Umberto Telarico25 inwhich the animal is described as a “little dog.”

A biography of St. Jerome from around 1348 “gaveartists the following instructions, which became canonical,about the saint’s iconography: ‘Cum capello, quo nun car-dinals utuntur, deposito, et leone mansueto’ [‘with a hat, thekind used by cardinals, not worn but set aside, and thetamed lion’].” The hat at issue is the cardinal’s hat presentin so many representations of Saint Jerome, together withthe lion. The fact that the saint was never a cardinal, andnever met a wounded lion does not matter. Once repre-sentations of Jerome acquired these arbitrary characteristics,they became part of the “facts” to be conveyed to posteri-ty—fortunately by means of wonderful masterpieces.26

Other artists freely employed these guidelines beforeand after Uccello. In less panoramic paintings, the tradition-al hat element was generally illustrated at a size sufficientto prevent its misinterpretation as a UFO. In the Scenes ofMonastic Life, however, it is merely a small identificationcode for the saint. Although it fails to identify Jerome formodern UFOlogists, Uccello would have assumed his 15th-century audience to be as casually familiar with this vocab-ulary as we might be with such cultural icons as Lincoln’sbeard, “The Force,” or the phrase “D’oh!”

ConclusionThere are important topics on which skeptical empiricistsand Christians of various denominations are sometimesdivided: did such-and-such a miracle occur as a literal his-torical event? Is there a place for biblical creationism inpublic schools? What are the demarcation lines betweenissues of faith and issues of falsifiable fact?

On the issue of UFOlogical hijacking of Christianartistic masterpieces, however, they have solid com-mon ground. It’s clear that projecting modern conceptsof alien visitation onto ancient European canvasses isunwarranted. The examples offered by web and bookauthors to date have sometimes been superficiallystriking, but all have proven completely vacuous uponeven moderately close examination.

From either a Christian or an art historical perspective,seeing UFOs in ancient paintings represents a distortion ofboth the true meaning of that art and the intention of itsdevout creators. Many Christians are likely to find offensive(or at least bemusing) unfounded suggestions that some ofhistory’s greatest artistic expressions of the Christian faith,

in fact, instead record alien visitation. The willfully ignorantconfusion of depictions of the Virgin Mary, the Holy Spirit,or other religious symbolism for aliens themselves is evenless likely to sit well with believers.27

Why do some people believe UFOs are represented inthese paintings? The passage of time is partly to blame.Perhaps UFOlogists cannot be faulted for incorrectly trans-lating the visual languages of centuries past. Time trans-forms languages, a fact all high school English studentsrealize when they find they need to translate archaic wordsand expressions in order to understand Shakespeare. Thereis even a core of commendable curiosity, an undisciplinedsort of scientific inquiry, behind some of these projects.

Despite this, however, it is fair to conclude thatUFOlogists have been far too quick to draw conclusionsfrom their misunderstandings of odd details in old paint-ings. Their failure to seek alternative explanations forUFO-like objects has led them to exhibit sloppy thinking,to diminish great works of historical piety, and to be dis-tracted from more promising candidates (if there are any)when seeking proof of alien visitation. t

4. The Crimson Disk

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W W W . S K E P T I C . C O M

References1. Although belief in alien visitation fluctuates,

about 1/3 of American adults agree thatsome UFOs contain extraterrestrial beings.Using the 2001 figures from the NationalScience Foundation Surveys of PublicUnderstanding of Science and Technology,in which 29% of American adults agreedthat UFOs represent an alien presence, andassuming that the U.S. has a population ofabout 293 million people, we can estimatethat 85 million Americans believe—a num-ber more than four times greater than thetotal population of Australia. While 29% ofAmericans believe in UFOs, incidentally,according to other polling data “just 9%know what a molecule is.” For more on U.S.belief in the paranormal see Susan CarolLosh et al, “What Does Education Really Do?Educational Dimensions and PseudoscienceSupport in the American General Public,1979-2001.” Skeptical Inquirer, Vol. 27, No.5, September/October 2003. Amherst, NY.For thoughts on science illiteracy, see thesource for the above quote about molecules:Norman Augustine, “What We Don’t KnowDoes Hurt Us. How Scientific IlliteracyHobbles Society.” Science, Vol. 279, No.5357, Issue of 13 Mar1998, pp.1640-1641.

2. See, for example, S. Boncompagni, Clypeus#29, 1970; D. Bedini, Notiziario UFO #81,1979; and, Mass, the Newspaper of theMysteries #107, 1980. (All Italian languagesources.)

3. Here are a few typical examples, with Italianlanguage sites in italics. Where quotes fromthese or other Italian sources are usedelsewhere in this article, they have beentranslated, edited for English comprehen-sion, and corrected for typesetting.http://www.ufoartwork.com/; http://www.crystalinks.com/ufohistory.html; http://www.geocities.com/jilaens/renai.htm; http: //www.soulcounseling.com/jul2001.html;http://www.clydelewis.com/dis/sungods/sungods.html; http://www.etcontact.net/AncientAstronauts.htm; http://www.ufoarea.com/gallery_aas.html; http://www.marsearthconnection.com/ancientart.htmlhttp://www.bibleufo.com/anapaint1.htm;http://www.edicolaweb.net/edic042a.htmhttp://www.edicolaweb.net/nonsoloufo/arte_i.htm http://digilander.libero.it/mysterica/Ufocrivelli.htm

4. There are, however, enough similaritiesbetween some abduction accounts and cer-tain forms of ‘demonic’ harassment as sub-jective, experiential events to merit investi-gation into the possibility that similar brainactivities are responsible for some subsetof both. Victims of ‘aliens’ and ‘demons’clearly describe different sorts of creatures(effectively ruling out the possibility thatboth sorts of event were caused by thesame, objectively existing alien species),but often describe similar symptoms of

paralysis, a weight on their chest, and soon. See, for example, Andrew D. Reisner, “APsychological Case Study of ‘Demon’ and‘Alien’ Visitation,” Skeptical Inquirer, Vol.25, No. 2, March/April 2001, Amherst, NY.

5. An amusing expression of the power of anaristocratic patron took place in Florence in1494. Piero de’ Medici, inspired by a heavysnowfall, called for the sculptorMichelangelo to come at once and executea commission. This commission was asnowman. Michelangelo, of course, didwhat he was told. (Nathaniel Harris, 1981.The Art of Michelangelo, Optimum Books,Twickenham, England, 1987.)

6. http://www.edicolaweb.net/ufo_a04g.htm(English translation by Diego Cuoghi; trans-lated text edited for English comprehensionby Daniel Loxton.)

7. http://digilander.libero.it/mysterica/Ufocrivelli.htm (English translation by DiegoCuoghi; translated text edited for Englishcomprehension by Daniel Loxton.)

8. Mark 1:10 (Revised Standard Version).Matthew 3:16 also describes the Spirit inthis scene as “descending like a dove, andalighting on” Jesus. Luke 3:21 is still moreliteral, insisting that the “Holy Spiritdescended upon him in bodily form, as adove.” Finally, John 1:32 tells us that theBaptist “saw the Spirit descend as a dove…”

9. The Museum tag identifies the artist as“Jacopo del Sellaio,” but the catalog entryunder No. 00292620 asserts that thepainting is best attributed to SebastianoMainardi (1450-1513), member of theclique of Ghirlandaio that worked inFlorence at the end of the 1400s, but alsonotes that elements of this painting (espe-cially in the figure of the Madonna) bearremarkable resemblances to elements ofworks by Lorenzo di Credi.

10. Daniele Bedini, Notiziario UFO #7 (Jul-Aug1996).

11. The archaic detail of the three stars symbol-izing the threefold virginity of Mary, and therendering of the Angel not as an anthropo-morphic character, but as a “cloud of light,”all suggest that the painter was (willingly orunwillingly) following the teachings ofGirolamo Savonarola, the Dominican monkwho preached a return to tradition and purityin the arts as well as in city life. The cata-logue entry of the Palazzo Vecchio Museumfor this painting notes that it shares “strikingsimilarities” with the works of Lorenzo diCredi. And it may be worthy of note thatLorenzo di Credi was one of the most devoutamong the followers of Savonarola, attendingthe burning of every nude he ever drew,before finally becoming a monk himself.

12. Luke 2:10, Revised Standard Version.13. Apocryphal Gospels edited by Marcello

Craveri, Torino, 1969, p. 21. Italian edition. 14. Marco Bussagli, History of Angels.

Rusconi, 1991.

15. Marco Bussagli, catalogue Wings of God.16. See, for example, S. Boncompagni,

Clypeus #29, 1970; D. Bedini, NotiziarioUFO #81, 1979; and, Mass, theNewspaper of the Mysteries #107, 1980.

17. R. Pinotti, http://www.notizieufo.com 18. Andrea Lonardo. 2000. The Jubileum

Places in Rome. San Paolo Publishing.(Automatic translation by Altavista-Babelfish;translated text edited for English compre-hension by Daniel Loxton.)

19. Juno was the Roman counterpart to theGreek goddess Hera. Her husband wasJupiter, the Roman version of the supremeGreek god Zeus.

20. Scenes of Monastic Life (Scene di VitaEremitica), also known as La Tebaide. (Nowat the Gallerie Dell’Accademia, Firenze.)

21. http://www.edicolaweb.net/edic042a.htm(English translation by Diego Cuoghi; trans-lated text edited for English comprehensionby Daniel Loxton.)

22. http://www.cini.it/palazzocini/testi/ferrar/gero.html (English translation by DiegoCuoghi; translated text edited for Englishcomprehension by Daniel Loxton.) No longerposted.

23. http://www.thanatos.it/cultura/personag-gi/san_girolamo.htm (English translation byDiego Cuoghi; translated text edited forEnglish comprehension by Daniel Loxton.)No longer posted.

24. The lion is also the symbol of evangelistSt. Mark (patron saint of Venice), and thusof the Republic of Venice. St. Jerome wassaid to have been born in Dalmatia, a terri-tory of Venice. Uccello himself had impor-tant Venetian patrons.

25. Notiziario UFO #8 (1996).26. From an article in FMR (the art magazine

edited by Franco Maria Ricci), by ErminioCaprotti. Here, Caprotti quotes Andrea fromBologna about the iconography of SaintJerome. FMR #94, September 1992.(English translation by Diego Cuoghi; trans-lated text edited for English comprehensionby Daniel Loxton.)

27. Many UFOlogical speculations about thesepaintings actually go deeper than thosedealt with in this article: some believe thatthe Bible itself records either a few encoun-ters with aliens or a vast history of such con-tacts. From this perspective, presumably,biblical miracles would be technologicalactions, visible heavenly phenomena wouldbe spacecraft in flight, and prophetic or mes-sianic messages would come from other lit-eral extra-solar worlds. Websites flirting withthese arguments have an unlikely, unfalsifi-able, and more or less bulletproof answer toskeptics who point out that these paintingswere meant to depict miraculous biblicalevents: they simply claim that those eventsreally were spacecraft sightings by the bibli-cal authors, and that later artworks of thesescenes are therefore UFO paintings after all.

THE ART OF IMAGINING UFOs