Alright, so let me tell you about what I’ve been up to lately. I kind of stumbled down this weird rabbit hole, totally by accident, looking into UFOs in old paintings. Yeah, you heard that right. Flying saucers and weird sky stuff in art from way, way back.
It started pretty randomly. I was just browsing online, probably trying to avoid doing something actually productive, and I saw this image. It was a classic painting, looked super old, but there was this little dot in the sky that looked suspiciously like a modern UFO. My first thought was, "Nah, that’s gotta be a joke, right? Photoshop, maybe?" But then I got curious. You know how it is. One click leads to another.
So, I started digging. Just typing stuff like "UFOs in ancient art" into the search bar. And man, there’s a whole world out there dedicated to this stuff. The most famous one that kept popping up was this event over Nuremberg, Germany, way back in 1561. There’s this old printed sheet, a broadsheet they called it, by a guy named Hans Glaser. It shows all these objects in the sky – spheres, crosses, tubes – apparently having some kind of aerial battle. It’s pretty wild to look at. People who are really into this, the ufologists, they point to things like this as proof that we’ve been visited for centuries.
Then I found another one that a lot of people talk about, "The Madonna with Saint Giovannino." It's from the 15th century, and way in the background, over Mary's shoulder, there's this little blobby thing in the sky. And there's even a tiny figure on a cliff pointing up at it with his dog. It really looks like a classic flying saucer, no kidding. I stared at that one for a good while.
Of course, for every painting someone claims has a UFO, there are art historians or skeptics who have other ideas. They'll say, "Oh, that’s a symbolic representation of an angel," or "It’s a cloud formation typical of the artistic style of that period," or "It's a hat, not a spaceship!" And sometimes, yeah, their explanations make sense. Other times, you’re left scratching your head a bit.
It’s funny because nowadays, lots of folks are trying to sound more official and call these things "UAPs" – Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena. I guess "UFO" has too much of a sci-fi, little green men vibe for some people. But honestly, if it's an object, it's flying, and you can't identify it, it's a UFO to me! Whatever you call it, the idea of these things appearing in art from before we even had airplanes is pretty intriguing.
My whole process with this was just getting sucked in deeper and deeper. I’d find one painting, then someone in a forum would mention another, and off I’d go again. I looked at so many images, from medieval tapestries that seemed to show disc-shaped objects in the sky to really old cave paintings with strange figures that people claim are ancient astronauts. It’s a proper maze.
What I realized pretty quick is that it’s super easy to see what you want to see. If you go in looking for spaceships, you'll start finding them in every smudge and stylistic flourish. It's like finding shapes in clouds, but with a more exciting, extraterrestrial twist.
I’m not saying it’s all bunk. Honestly, who am I to say? Some of the images are genuinely puzzling. But I also think a lot of it is just our modern eyes trying to make sense of old symbols and art styles we don’t fully understand anymore. We see a disc, they might have seen a divine shield or a representation of a comet.
So, after spending a good few evenings looking into all this, I wouldn’t say I’m a true believer that all these paintings show alien craft. But it was a fascinating journey! It definitely made me look at old art with a fresh pair of eyes. Now, whenever I see an old painting, I can’t help but scan the skies in the background, just in case. It’s a fun little "what if" game. And hey, it gave me something interesting to talk about, right?
