Our popular conception of an extraterrestrial aircraft is the classic "flying saucer," a term that came from a misinterpretation of a UFO description in 1947. But there were images and descriptions that came pretty close to the classic flying saucer shape long before that. And when we look back at Renaissance art, a curious number of those paintings seem to interpret messages from God in a curiously familiar saucer shape. The image above is titled Baptism of Christ by Aert de Gelder. Painted around the year 1710, it illustrates Matthew 3:16, "After Jesus was baptized, He went up immediately from the water. The heavens suddenly opened for Him, and He saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming down on Him." Yet that doesn't look anything like a dove. It looks like a flying saucer. It's far from the only painting in which flying saucers take the place of heavenly phenomena. See more of these paintings and read of their interpretations at ArtNet. -via Boing Boing