Aliens in paintings?

Shots taken from:
MADONNA COL BAMBINO E SAN GIOVANNINO
(Madonna and Child with the Infant Saint John)

Right - this image was 'created' by an atheist fellow on a site I frequent, with the following attached blurb:

It amazes me that people who strongly believe in religion seem to laugh at the idea of aliens visiting earth.
ME: Here's a painting of the virgin mary and wait, what's that. Seems that the artist thought it was important because of how detailed it is and the guy looking up at it. Looks very machine like, kind of like a space ship.

Fundie: Aw no, it's really uh...uh..satan, yeah. It's satan trying to lead us away from Jesus.

Me: But why is it in a painting.

Fundie: Uh....uh....(insert several bible verses here).

Me: That doesn't prove anything. Tell me, why would someone paint some flying ship in the sky in a virgin mary painting

Fundie:.....you're going to hell! (runs off.

My response, in an attempt to show that it's open to interpretation:

so there's no chance that it was a comet then? painted by someone who had heard of, yet not actually seen one? just like the strange statues of dolphins that look nothing like dolphins, because they were crafted by artists who had had them described to them, but never actually seen one

I'm all for alien life, the universe is too old and too big NOT to have more sentient life out there, but visiting us? sometimes, a UFO really is just an unidentified flying object, y'know - and sometimes it's a ufo to one person, but has been identified by someone else.

and his reply:

I'm quite sure that if it were a comet, and that person heard a discription of it. It would not look like a mechanical object sitting in the sky with lots of flashing lights on it.

I linked him to an article about these paintings:

Scratch that idea then, and go with the iconography of the age, perhaps?

Art And UFOs

He responds:

that's very interesting. It only leaves one question, why would they make some machine like object in the sky rather then an angel or people on clouds like the other paintings pictured there.

My response to this silly question:

It doesn't look like a machine-like-object to me - probably because I'm not looking for a machine-like-object. This phenomenon is called 'confirmation bias' - you are seeing what you want to see. When I look at this painting, I see a glowing cloud, and nothing more.

Plenty of paintings of the Nativity have versions of this in them, either a cloud on it's own, or a cloud with an angel, or an angel on it's own, ocasionally there is a light-radiating tear in the sky, with or without an angel - the reason being that they were simply symbols, not an actual representation of the true thing (all based on a verse in St Luke's Gospel, where he tells of an angel coming down and telling some shepherds that christ has been born.)

As is obvious to anyone who has researched the subject, even in passing, this is a common symbolic icon used in hundreds of paintings of the Nativity, and not a painting of some machine-like-object that some claim is a 'UFO' - it has been identified, it is well known.

Add to this the fact that it is obvious these artists had damn good eyes for detail - if they were painting something they had seen, and it was a machine-like-object, why would they paint it as a blobby looking cloud, in exactly the same composition and style as all the other symbolic icons used in contemporary Nativity paintings?

I despaire, I really do. I know there are all types of atheists, just as there are all types of everyone else - but really, do they have to go so far out of their way to make themselve's look stupid?

It bothers me, it really does. It probably shouldn't...

Anyway - how on earth does that shiny blob look like a 'mechanical object'? Is he seeing something I can't? It looks more like a glowing rock and is obviously meant to be a cloud.

He obviously hasn't done his bloody research - the thing is a symbolic representation of a fucking angel telling some shepherds the good news.

The same damn thing is seen in almost all of the Nativity paintings, some with the angel on show, some with only the cloud, some with both, some with a glow, some with rays - like this one. Almost all of them also have the shepherd looking up, shieling his eyes, and again, almost all of them also have a dog with said shephered, also looking at the cloud.

It's got slightly different forms in all of them, but it's always the same damn thing.

But does this guy care? No. Because he's an idiot.

If he's going to start using old paintings to shore up his rather silly beliefs about aliens, he really aught to do his homework first.

Edit: Added my response to his 'question'.