UFOs in Renaissance paintings? A disputed reading by several researchers
According to an Italian UFO researcher, two Renaissance paintings and the mysterious “snow” of a 1954 soccer match in Florence point to a common clue: flying saucers. The theory, published on October 5, is backed only by the image interpretations of a few authors, however, not by scientific or art-historical consensus.
The Madonna della Neve triptych, held at the Capodimonte Museum in Naples, was painted by Masolino da Panicale in the early 15th century, based on a legend from 1,000 years earlier: according to tradition, snow fell in Rome in summer in 358, and Pope Liberius marked out the foundations of the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore in the snow. In his 1996 book Angeli, Dei, Astronavi, Italian UFO researcher Roberto Pinotti raises the question of how Masolino could have dared to depict an aerial phenomenon like this at all in an era when anything unusual would have been regarded as witchcraft or a miracle. Roberto Volterri, an archaeologist at the University of Rome who otherwise works on the analysis of metal finds, concluded after examining the painting that the snow falls from an elongated, cigar-shaped cloud, which he compared to a UFO photo taken over Namur, Belgium, in 1955.
Another painting, disputed authorship
In 1996, in the pages of Notiziario UFO, Daniele Bedini described the painting Madonna and Child with St. John, held at the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence, as showing a lead-gray, domed, oval object being watched by a shepherd and his barking dog. Art historians, however, cannot definitively settle the painting's authorship either: it was previously cataloged as the work of Jacopo del Sellaio, and was later attributed to Sebastiano Mainardi (1460–1513). A similar motif also appears in a painting held in a church in Sommariva Perno, Piedmont, where the shepherd, covering his eyes, looks at a shining figure arriving from a cloud.
The depiction of shining clouds and haloes has long been present in Christian iconography. The apocryphal Protoevangelium of James and the second chapter of the Gospel of Luke both speak of a cloud wrapped in light and of angelic glory, respectively, which blinds the shepherds. This tradition by itself explains the round, shining shapes, even without UFOs.
The images mentioned in the text can be found in the source article.
Volterri also brings a third event, distant in time, into the theory. On October 27, 1954, the Fiorentina–Pistoiese match had to be interrupted because white, cotton-like filaments fell from the sky onto the stadium. The material was examined by Giovanni Canneri, a professor at the Institute of Analytical Chemistry of the University of Florence, who found it to be a substance containing boron, silicon, calcium and magnesium. Volterri suggests that the same substance may have fallen then as allegedly fell in Rome in 358, but no independent investigation has confirmed this connection, and the chemical composition by itself does not point to an extraterrestrial origin.
What do we know, and what don't we?
We know for certain that all three paintings and the 1954 soccer match event exist, in documented form. We also know that the UFO interpretation comes from a few specific authors, Pinotti, Volterri and Bedini, who put forward the idea in their own analyses from 1996 and later. What we don't know: whether the painters were really referring to an aerial phenomenon, or simply followed the established religious visual language of the era, as the biblical and apocryphal texts also suggest. It is also unknown how the authorship dispute over the second painting affects the interpretation, and the material analysis of the 1954 case says nothing about its origin, only about its composition.
The sober take
The source itself mentions that the depiction of shining clouds and haloes is an established motif in Christian painting, which can be traced back to the divine light phenomena described in biblical and apocryphal texts, explaining the visual elements even without UFOs. The chemical composition of the 1954 Florence “snow” was examined, but the source gives no definitive explanation of its origin.