Ventura Salimbeni created the Glorification of the Eucharist in 1595, but some conspiracy theorists claim it includes modern technology.
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Barmy social media users believe the Italian artist somehow travelled hundreds of years into the future – and added a clue in his work.
Some people claim to have spotted Russia‘s Sputnik-1 satellite lurking in the background of the painting, despite it being launched in 1957.
Honing in on a spiky blue sphere, conspiracy theorists say it eerily resembles the first artificial satellite to orbit the Earth.
Despite the claims initially being laughed off, even experts have admitted the pair look “surprisingly similar”.
Steve Mera, chairman of the Manchester Association of Paranormal Investigation & Training (MAPIT), said: “You start to find a lot of religious connotation linked in with the UFO phenomenon.
“This painting was painted in the 1600s and nobody ever really knew what that was a painting of, until we kind of looked at Sputnik.”
He told Indy100 it had even left him questioning if people “somehow had knowledge of future events.”
Steve continued: “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).”
But religious buffs insist the detailed sphere was simply a symbol of the “Creation Globe” that is seen in many paintings of the Holy Trinity.
It was suggested that Salimbeni had combined elements of the Sun and the Moon in his illustration of it.
This is not the first time modern gadgets have been spotted in historic paintings either.
Conspiracy theorists claimed to have spotted a woman with her eyes glued to an iPhone in Ferdinand George Waldmüller’s work.
Although it was published two centuries before smartphones entered our lives, it left many people scratching their heads.
Even former Apple boss Tim Cook has been stumped by a similar incident after visiting a museum in Amsterdam in 2016.
He claimed to have noticed an iPhone in a 350-year-old piece of artwork hanging on the wall.
Cook earlier told a conference: “I always thought I knew when the iPhone was invented, but now I’m not so sure anymore.”
The tech giant first came out with the iPhone in 2007.
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