UFOs in Christian Art
During the Renaissance, when religious belief drove much of everyday life, artists expressed Christian faith in exalted, often fanciful terms. Paintings and tapestries of the period bristle with details that strike us as provocative: flying half-moons with faces; radiant discs sending forth visible rays (as in Carlo Crivelli’s 1496 painting The Annunciation); and airborne objects that we would today describe as “saucers.”
Hindsight suggests to us that Renaissance artists created stylized interpretations of UFOs, but hindsight is mistaken. What we see through the lens of our own time was viewed centuries ago through the twinned lenses of faith and commerce. Contrary to latter-day claims made by overeager UFOlogists, the artists’ symbology invokes God, not visitors from space.
Saucers, rays, cherubim, faces in the clouds—those are elements in a whole catalogue of Renaissance religious iconography dear to the wealthy patrons that supported artists. Like present-day commercial artists, Crivelli and others worked to please the people that paid them, knowing that their employers expected engaging symbols of the Divine.