Canonical: https://mdawson.ai/work/unexplained/strange-skies-christian-art/ [← The unexplained](https://mdawson.ai/work/unexplained/) essay # Strange Skies in Christian Art Michael Dawson × AI 1 November 2026 **Christian Art and the Unexplained** [Collection introduction](https://mdawson.ai/work/unexplained/#christian-art-study) - [The artworks](https://mdawson.ai/work/unexplained/christian-art-atlas/) - [The essay](https://mdawson.ai/work/unexplained/strange-skies-christian-art/) - [Optional · Methods](https://mdawson.ai/work/unexplained/reading-shapes-christian-art/) ![Carlo Crivelli’s complete Annunciation: a Renaissance street, Mary’s room, and a radiant ring sending a fine golden ray across the scene.](https://mdawson.ai/art/works/christian-art/display/03_Carlo_Crivelli_Annunciation_1486-1200.webp) Carlo Crivelli, The Annunciation, with Saint Emidius, 1486. National Gallery, London; reproduction via Wikimedia Commons, public domain (PD-Art). View full artwork → A ring in the sky sends a narrow shaft of light across a Renaissance town and into a woman’s room. Follow the line. It crosses the architecture and reaches Mary; the dove travels with it. Carlo Crivelli’s *Annunciation, with Saint Emidius*, painted in 1486, gives the Christian account of the Incarnation a striking visual form: a source above, a ray descending, a human life at its destination.[1](https://mdawson.ai/work/unexplained/strange-skies-christian-art/#user-content-fn-crivelli) The arrangement also looks startlingly familiar to someone who has spent time with accounts of unexplained objects and lights. I believe there is a connection between these old sky images and the encounters we describe today. Discs, globes, enclosed figures and descending light recur in ways that hold my attention. I want to look at that connection closely enough to explain what I see in it. My belief is an interpretation. The pictures establish the forms we can inspect; a shared physical cause would require a separate evidential chain. Within that boundary, I want to give the resemblance its full force and let the complete works complicate it. ![A circular opening with pale radiating marks in Crivelli’s sky, connected to a thin golden ray.](https://mdawson.ai/art/works/christian-art/crops/P02_tight.png) *The sky source in Crivelli’s Annunciation. The complete painting is the lead image; its ray continues toward Mary’s room. Exact pixel crop (312 × 195); enlarged for display, without enhancement. Carlo Crivelli, The Annunciation, with Saint Emidius, 1486. National Gallery, London; reproduction via Wikimedia Commons, public domain (PD-Art).* Open supplied image Full source image [Image source](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Annunciation,_with_Saint_Emidius_-_Carlo_Crivelli_-_National_Gallery.jpg) [Licence](https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/) News of Ascoli Piceno’s grant of self-government arrived on 25 March 1482, the feast of the Annunciation. Crivelli’s 1486 commission celebrated the event; Saint Emidius offers a model of the city.[2](https://mdawson.ai/work/unexplained/strange-skies-christian-art/#user-content-fn-crivelli-civic) I read the painting as holding two announcements, one divine and one civic. The complete scene carries a city’s memory as well as the religious story. Look at the ring again with that city around it. The ray still catches the eye, but it now belongs to a richer arrangement of people, buildings, belief and remembered news. The surroundings give us more to follow. ## Rims, domes and a distant observer The [illustrated atlas](https://mdawson.ai/work/unexplained/christian-art-atlas/) gathers twelve historical artwork groups, with repeated motifs and alternative views. I assembled this collection around forms that invited comparison; it represents a particular inquiry within Christian art.[3](https://mdawson.ai/work/unexplained/strange-skies-christian-art/#user-content-fn-study) The Beaune tapestries contain some of its clearest saucer-like profiles. A small dark cap rises above a broad, narrow brim, apparently suspended beyond the trees. The form occurs more than once in the *Life of the Virgin* cycle. The French heritage record dates the weaving to 1500; it does not conclusively identify these small motifs or the proposed hat-like emblem.[4](https://mdawson.ai/work/unexplained/strange-skies-christian-art/#user-content-fn-beaune) ![A small dark raised cap with a narrow brim sits above trees in the Beaune tapestry.](https://mdawson.ai/art/works/christian-art/crops/P07_wider.png) *The cap-and-brim motif in Mary’s journey to her husband’s house, from the Beaune cycle. The selected tapestry scenes and the second occurrence appear in the atlas. Exact pixel crop (198 × 108); enlarged for display, without enhancement. Benjamin Smith / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.* Open supplied image Full source image [Image source](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Beaune_-_Coll%C3%A9giale_Notre-Dame_-_04.jpg) [Licence](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/) The raised centre and extended rim are the features that interest me. Set the two occurrences beside each other, then return to their places in the tapestries. Their repetition makes the question more specific: what role did this particular form play in the cycle? A comparison with period hats or emblems must account for its shape and setting, just as a vehicle interpretation would have to do. In the Florentine *Madonna and Child with the Infant Saint John*, a round devotional painting, the attraction lies in a different relationship. A dark oval appears above a distant observer and dog. The juxtaposition gives the sky detail an immediate pull: our eyes follow another figure’s attention. Yet the photograph used for the crop contains very few pixels in that region. It supports a description of orientation and a lighter surround, but resolves no windows, hull or mechanical structure. Catalogue attributions and date ranges also differ.[5](https://mdawson.ai/work/unexplained/strange-skies-christian-art/#user-content-fn-florence) A church panel at Sighișoara presents another oval, this time ribbed, with a pointed underside and a connection above it. It hangs over a church within a cloud-filled composition. A wider photograph restores the three-panel setting, while the panel itself preserves a biblical inscription. Local museum testimony places the work in the eighteenth century; the museum director reads the motif as a cloud, and the parish priest proposes an offering vessel with smoke.[6](https://mdawson.ai/work/unexplained/strange-skies-christian-art/#user-content-fn-sighisoara) I find the rim and underside worth a sustained look. A shield is another comparison to investigate, particularly its central boss and possible attachment. A matched period image or conservation record could help distinguish these readings. For now, the competing descriptions tell us exactly where to look again. ## The sky already had a vocabulary Some of the strongest resemblances come with well-supported historical readings. In the Dečani Crucifixion, small figures near the top of the scene appear enclosed by pointed forms. Their paired placement matters. Scholarship identifies them as personifications of the Sun and Moon, linking the Christian image with Hellenistic traditions.[7](https://mdawson.ai/work/unexplained/strange-skies-christian-art/#user-content-fn-decani) That explanation gives the forms a history. It also makes the comparison more interesting to me: a celestial body becomes something occupied and personified. We can follow the pointed outlines, the enclosed figures and the pair’s position in the scene without erasing the tradition that helps explain them. Salimbeni’s *Glorification of the Eucharist* supplies a different likeness. Its shaded globe and projecting rods can recall a satellite. The municipal account identifies the rods as sceptres held by the Father and Son, and the globe belongs to the work’s religious and cosmological subject.[8](https://mdawson.ai/work/unexplained/strange-skies-christian-art/#user-content-fn-salimbeni) The modern association is immediate; the surrounding figures show how the objects participate in another account of the heavens. Piero della Francesca’s *Baptism of Christ* supplies an essential contrast. Thin clouds stretch across the sky, while the dove above Christ has a broad horizontal outline of its own. The National Gallery identifies both.[9](https://mdawson.ai/work/unexplained/strange-skies-christian-art/#user-content-fn-piero) In the methods page, a cloud, that dove and a cardinal’s hat sit side by side. All can present a flattened profile. A rim, a dome or a horizontal body becomes useful evidence only when we ask what else can produce it. I want these examples to remain in the collection. They make the eye work harder. Christian symbols, ordinary objects and unresolved forms belong in the same comparison because their differences help us describe the resemblance more precisely. ## A connection can preserve a difference In [*Resonant patterns*](https://mdawson.ai/blog/23/), I ask what must survive when an image or idea changes form. These crops make that question tangible. Removing a town, a paired figure or an inscription can make a shape easier to recognise while making the artwork harder to understand. The movement from detail to whole is part of the inquiry. Crivelli’s descending ray has a later counterpart in Arent de Gelder’s *Baptism of Christ*, painted around 1710. An oval opening containing a dove sends shafts of light toward the baptism below. Across these different scenes, the relationship between a source in the sky and a human event on the ground draws my attention. The [Rendlesham account](https://mdawson.ai/work/unexplained/rendlesham/) offers a modern comparison: a report of light directed downward. The resemblance lies in that direction of light. The memorandum describes a triangular object in one observation and downward light in another; it does not combine them into a craft beaming at a person. The [methods page](https://mdawson.ai/work/unexplained/reading-shapes-christian-art/) preserves that distinction.[3](https://mdawson.ai/work/unexplained/strange-skies-christian-art/#user-content-fn-study) The [Nimitz study](https://mdawson.ai/work/unexplained/nimitz/) offers a useful interruption. The familiar Tic Tac description is an elongated capsule. No convincing counterpart emerged among the artworks compared here. Nor did the comparison establish a clear compact triangular or V-shaped body. An extended cloud or bird does not supply the missing capsule.[3](https://mdawson.ai/work/unexplained/strange-skies-christian-art/#user-content-fn-study) Those absences sharpen the connection I am making. The recurring forms here are chiefly discs, ovals, globes, projections and light, with different combinations in different works. Keeping that specificity is more rewarding than making every unfamiliar mark resemble every modern report. ## A vivid image with an unverified past The Rated Red Instagram scene is the most explicit saucer-and-light image considered alongside the collection: a giant disc above haloed figures and a town, with a descending band of light. Its two slides show one underlying scene.[10](https://mdawson.ai/work/unexplained/strange-skies-christian-art/#user-content-fn-instagram) The post claims an age of roughly 950 years without identifying a monastery, catalogue record or traceable early reproduction. Its displayed October 2025 date establishes the post, not the supposed painting. A later article pairs the same illustration with a description of the visibly different Sighișoara work.[11](https://mdawson.ai/work/unexplained/strange-skies-christian-art/#user-content-fn-viral) The illustration therefore remains separate from the twelve historical groups. Its production method is undetermined; this review did not establish that it was AI-generated. The [original post](https://www.instagram.com/p/DP7OzjDgn_W/) and the [Sighișoara panel photograph](https://openminds.tv/possible-ufo-discovered-old-wall-painting-romania/) let the reader inspect that difference. The source problem is concrete: identify the alleged original object and trace its history. ## What I want to follow One part of the study tested whether image-similarity software could distinguish examples already identified as clouds from other forms. It matched only five of twelve known labels, too few to distinguish the groups reliably. The [methods and comparison findings](https://mdawson.ai/work/unexplained/reading-shapes-christian-art/) explain the test, its limitations and how changes to the crops affected its results.[3](https://mdawson.ai/work/unexplained/strange-skies-christian-art/#user-content-fn-study) The pictures remain worth studying on their own terms. A distinctive form might travel through a print, a workshop model or a copied composition. A proposed connection to a witnessed event would need a dated account and a traceable relationship to the work. Following either route could change how we understand a motif’s persistence. I believe these images and modern encounter accounts are connected, and I want the collection to make that conviction available for inspection. The pleasure is in the particulars: the brim beyond the trees, the observer beneath the oval, the paired figures in the Crucifixion, the ray crossing a city. A close look gives each one a different question. Return to Crivelli’s painting. The ring now has a city beneath it, a dove within its light and a history around it. I still recognise the resemblance that drew me in. Knowing more about the picture gives me more to investigate. Continue with the [atlas of all twelve historical groups](https://mdawson.ai/work/unexplained/christian-art-atlas/) or the [methods and comparison findings](https://mdawson.ai/work/unexplained/reading-shapes-christian-art/). ## Footnotes 1. National Gallery, [*The Annunciation, with Saint Emidius*, NG739](https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/paintings/carlo-crivelli-the-annunciation-with-saint-emidius). The museum identifies the ray and dove within the Annunciation; the date is 1486. [↩](https://mdawson.ai/work/unexplained/strange-skies-christian-art/#user-content-fnref-crivelli) 2. National Gallery, [*Building the Picture: Crivelli, The Annunciation, with Saint Emidius*](https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/research/publications/exhibition-catalogues/building-the-picture/entering-the-picture/crivelli-annunciation). The catalogue relates the commission to Ascoli Piceno’s self-government, the arrival of the news on the feast of the Annunciation and Saint Emidius’s model of the city. The “two announcements” reading in the essay is the author’s interpretation. [↩](https://mdawson.ai/work/unexplained/strange-skies-christian-art/#user-content-fnref-crivelli-civic) 3. The Dawson Ledger, Christian art study data and method summary, research completed 31 October-1 November 2026. The collection is curated, not a representative sample of Christian art. The numerical pilot remains limited to its original eleven artwork groups. [↩](https://mdawson.ai/work/unexplained/strange-skies-christian-art/#user-content-fnref-study) [↩2](https://mdawson.ai/work/unexplained/strange-skies-christian-art/#user-content-fnref-study-2) [↩3](https://mdawson.ai/work/unexplained/strange-skies-christian-art/#user-content-fnref-study-3) [↩4](https://mdawson.ai/work/unexplained/strange-skies-christian-art/#user-content-fnref-study-4) 4. French Ministry of Culture, [*Tenture de la Vie de la Vierge*, IM21008298](https://pop.culture.gouv.fr/notice/palissy/IM21008298). The motif descriptions and comparison findings here come from examination of the selected images, rather than an official catalogue identification of the small forms. [↩](https://mdawson.ai/work/unexplained/strange-skies-christian-art/#user-content-fnref-beaune) 5. Italian Ministry of Culture, [object record 0900292620](https://catalogo.cultura.gov.it/detail/HistoricOrArtisticProperty/0900292620); Fondazione Zeri, [photographic catalogue entry 36542](https://catalogo.fondazionezeri.unibo.it/scheda.v2.jsp?apply=true&decorator=layout_resp&id=36542&locale=it&tipo_scheda=OA&titolo=Maestro+Allegro%2C+Adorazione+del+Bambino+con+san+Giovannino). The catalogue attributions and date ranges differ. [↩](https://mdawson.ai/work/unexplained/strange-skies-christian-art/#user-content-fnref-florence) 6. Știrile ProTV, [museum-director interview, 16 May 2016](https://stirileprotv.ro/stiri/stiinta/reprezentare-a-unui-ozn-in-cel-mai-vechi-monument-din-cetatea-sighisoarei-este-in-pictura-unei-scene-religioase-foto.html), and [museum/parish interviews, 1 August 2025](https://stirileprotv.ro/stiri/actualitate/o-pictura-veche-dintr-o-biserica-evenghelica-din-sighisoara-starneste-controverse-zpare-sa-fie-un-ozn.html). The eighteenth-century attribution is local expert testimony; an exact year and support/technique were not independently established in this study. [↩](https://mdawson.ai/work/unexplained/strange-skies-christian-art/#user-content-fnref-sighisoara) 7. Dragana Van de moortel-Ilić, [“An Examination of the Images of the Sun and the Moon in the Visoki Dečani Monastery in Kosovo”](https://www.cultureandcosmos.org/pdfs/21/CCv21_19VanDeMoortel.pdf), *Culture and Cosmos* 21 (2017), pp. 301-319. [↩](https://mdawson.ai/work/unexplained/strange-skies-christian-art/#user-content-fnref-decani) 8. Comune di Montalcino, [*Chiesa di San Lorenzo in San Pietro*](https://www.comune.montalcino.si.it/it/vivere/752757?category_id=410499), identifying the globe and sceptres; Italian heritage catalogue, [object record 0900463392](https://catalogo.beniculturali.it/detail/HistoricOrArtisticProperty/0900463392), for the artist, title and date. [↩](https://mdawson.ai/work/unexplained/strange-skies-christian-art/#user-content-fnref-salimbeni) 9. National Gallery, [audio description of Piero della Francesca’s *The Baptism of Christ*](https://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/audio/audio-descriptions/piero-della-francesca-s-the-baptism-of-christ), including its clouds and dove. [↩](https://mdawson.ai/work/unexplained/strange-skies-christian-art/#user-content-fnref-piero) 10. Rated Red / @realratedred, [Instagram post DP7OzjDgn\_W](https://www.instagram.com/p/DP7OzjDgn_W/), displayed publication date 17 October 2025. The exact post and both slides were inspected on 1 November 2026. This dates the publication, not an alleged medieval artwork. [↩](https://mdawson.ai/work/unexplained/strange-skies-christian-art/#user-content-fnref-instagram) 11. Alfa Press, [“950-year-old painting showing UFOs, fact or historical misinterpretation?”](https://alfapress.al/english/mistere-kuriozitete/piktura-950-vjecare-ku-shfaqen-ufo-t-fakt-apo-keqinterpretim-i190724), 11 April 2026. Cited as an example of claim circulation and image/source conflation, not as authentication of the scene. [↩](https://mdawson.ai/work/unexplained/strange-skies-christian-art/#user-content-fnref-viral) Follow the thought ## [Christian Art: An Atlas of Unfamiliar Skies](https://mdawson.ai/work/unexplained/christian-art-atlas/) Move from the essay’s argument to the complete artwork entries, source records and unresolved details.