Antonio Campi's Passion of the Christ - UFO?

Hello,

I saw this painting whilst walking the halls of the Louvre and it made me stop dead and stare for ages.

The painting is by a man named Anotonio Campi (c. 1522 – 1587) and is called The Mystery of the Passion of Christ.

I have put a link to the painting below (unsure how to embed):



I do not really need to divert your eyes anywhere as it should be pretty obvious what I find unusual about the painting.

What the hell is that?

The Sun?
Unfortunately not, that is on the left hand side of the photo.

A planet?
Unlikely, the object appears metallic and has some kind of cone (or whirlwind?) on the bottom.

The object appears to have come through the skies, burst through the cloud, to present itself on Earth, as if it travelled through a portal. This whirlwind on the bottom of the sphere could be some kind of representation of time travel (I know, crazy, reading a Michio Kaku book on Parallel Worlds right now which goes into the physical possibility of time travel). The idea that if you spin a cylinder fast enough you could travel back in time.

I instantly thought of Ezekiel's UFO when I saw this. The description is slightly different as Ezekiel saw wheels but I believe he said those wheels formed a sphere?

I would like to put this forward for discussion anyhow. I know that there are a lot of "orbs" found in renaissance art but this one really blew me away and I had not seen it before on ATS.

Cheers

reply to post by george_gaz


Dear george_gaz

Interesting find, I wish I had found it when I was there.

However trying to figure out what is going through an artists mind some 500 years latter. All I can say is good luck.