Art fans shocked after spotting 'Sputnik satellite' in 400 year old religious painting

Time travel, or just an illusion? Eagle eyed art lovers have spotted what appears to be a satellite in a four-century old painting of Jesus Christ.

The Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost are depicted in the ‘Glorification of the Eucharist’, a painting by Ventura Salimbeni from 1595.

But in the background is something surprising – a blue sphere with spikes sticking out of it, which some people have interpreted as Sputnik, the first satellite to orbit the Earth in 1957.

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Steve Mera, chairman of the Manchester Association of Paranormal Investigation & Training (MAPIT) and a paranormal specialist and lecturer, said at a conference: “You start to find a lot of religious connotation linked in with the UFO phenomenon.

“This painting [the Eucharist] was painted in the 1600s and nobody ever really knew what that was a painting of, until we kind of looked at Sputnik, which was the first satellite to pass round the Earth,” he said.

Russian workmen carry a model of one of the Sputnik satellites in front of a model of a rocket nose-cone at the Russian Trade Fair at Earl's Court in LondonRay Moreton/Keystone/Getty Images

“What is really, really interesting is it is surprisingly similar to Sputnik, even to the point there is a little nodule there (on Sputnik) and the exact same nodule on the side there [on the object in the painting].”

Clearly, Salimbeni wouldn’t have known about Sputnik. Or would he…?

Mera added: "Did they somehow have knowledge of future events?"

Well, we can probably assume not.

Instead, experts think the ball is a representation of the so-called celestial sphere (or the universe), while the spikes indicate God’s power over it.

But for conspiracy theorists, it’s yet another win for time travel.

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