The appearance of new objects or unexpected phenomena in the sky was an event of great significance in the past, and often considered to be a portent of the future, good or bad. This article considers the few that were recorded in paintings, and starts with the most famous of all, the star of Bethlehem that appears in many depictions of the birth of Christ.

The linked stories of the birth of Christ in a shed at Bethlehem, and the subsequent adoration of the infant by three wise men, kings or Magi “from the east”, are among the most popular and enduring among paintings in the Christian canon. The outlines given in the Gospels of Luke, chapter 2, and Matthew, chapter 2, have conventionally become elaborated.

Three wise men had seen a new star, possibly a comet or an unusually bright planet, which they believed would lead them to the birth of a great prophet. They travelled by the guidance of that star, to arrive at Bethlehem. There they found the newborn Christ with Mary his mother, paid homage to him in the shed in which the holy family was lodging, and presented their gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

Giotto’s Adoration of the Magi from about 1305 shows the star as a celestial ball of fire streaking across the sky, and the three wise men pay their respects to the newborn Christ and his mother.

Above Bosch’s view of the local Brabant countryside in his Adoration of the Magi of 1490-1500 he places a more modest and stationary star shining bright over its distant city, as shown in the detail below.

Blake’s version of the Adoration of the Kings is conventional in showing the three wise men presenting their gifts to Jesus and his parents. At the left, outside, shepherds are tending to their flocks of sheep beneath a stylised star, and at the right are the ox and ass.

There remains controversy over what celestial event might have occurred at the time.

Very few paintings show known events in the sky, and I know of only one depicting a full solar eclipse.

Although many painters, particularly the Impressionists, have shown fleeting effects of light and the occasional rainbow, Enrique Simonet took the opportunity of a solar eclipse on 30 August 1905 to paint his Eclipse (1905). This was visible across eastern and northern Spain between about 1300 and 1320 UTC, and this painting is one of its few remaining records.

Realistic paintings of comets are also rare, and unimpressive.

Generally acclaimed as William Dyce’s finest painting, Pegwell Bay, Kent – a Recollection of October 5th 1858 (c 1858) shows this bay on the Kent coast, during a family holiday visit: a coastal scene worked up into a large finished oil painting. Although not easily seen in this image, there’s a small point of light high in the middle of the sky which is Donati’s comet, not due to return until 3811. Couple that with the inclination of the sun and the state of the tide, and you should be able to place this view precisely in both time and space, and confirm that it does indeed show this bay on 5 October 1858.

A few paintings show impossible celestial events.

John Martin’s painting of The Deluge from 1834 has two points of reference: the Biblical account of the flood, and Martin’s personal belief in prior catastrophe. As the sciences became ascendant during the nineteenth century, some educated people believed that in the past there had been an alignment of the sun, earth, and moon, and the collision of a comet resulting in global flooding. This was promoted by the French natural scientist Baron Georges Cuvier, and subscribed to by Martin.

True to form, his painting is dark and apocalyptic: near the centre, tiny survivors are just about to be overwhelmed by an immense wave bearing down at them from the left and above. The misaligned sun and moon barely penetrate the dense cloud, and to the top right is a melée of rock avalanche and lightning bolt. This was awarded a gold medal at the Paris Salon of 1835.

Several of Paul Nash’s surrealist landscapes show the moon in its phases, among them Landscape of the Vernal Equinox (III) from 1944, which presents the impossible view of a full moon and the sun visible close together and just above the horizon.

Spades are agricultural tools of ancient origin, with a flat blade in line with its shaft, and used for digging. Their closest relative is the shovel with a broader blade for moving loose earth, gravel and snow, and the hoe whose blade is mounted at a right angle to the shaft. In some common applications, such as lifting potatoes and other root crops, a fork with three or more tines is normally preferred.

As a well-known tool for digging, the spade is often associated with the digging of graves, and appears in some religious paintings depicting the imminent interment of Christ’s body following the Crucifixion.

Jacopo Tintoretto’s huge and magnificent Crucifixion from 1565 shows a man digging a conventional grave, as seen in the detail below.

On the left of this detail, two men are gambling with dice in a small rock shelter suggestive of a tomb. To the right of them, a gravedigger has just started his work with a spade.

A spade may also appear in depictions of Christ’s subsequent resurrection, in his appearance to Mary as a gardener, often known by the Latin words from the Vulgate as Noli Me Tangere, “touch me not”, the words attributed to Christ in the Gospels.

In her Jesus Appears to Mary Magdalene from 1581, Lavinia Fontana re-locates this encounter between Mary and Jesus, dressing him in the garb of a mediaeval Italian gardener, and holding a fine gardener’s spade with his left hand.

The eccentric Alessandro Magnasco painted his Noli Me Tangere (1705-10) over a background of ruins made by a collaborator. Christ is shown standing, holding a long-hafted spade with his left hand. Mary is on her knees, a small urn in front of her. Their clothes are rough, and Christ’s appear to be his burial linen, blowing in the wind.

Spades are not uncommon in paintings set in the countryside.

Hans Andersen Brendekilde’s On Forbidden Roads from 1886 shows one of the core themes of Naturalist painting: itinerant workers making their way through neglected corners of the countryside. These two men are equipped for forestry, with a two-man saw, axes, and spades. Almost hidden among the vegetation at the far left is a third figure, who looks anxiously towards them. Maybe none of them should really be there at all.

There’s a more complex story behind Brendekilde’s People by a Road from 1893. The group at the left are old road-workers, breaking larger rocks into coarse gravel. They lived out under the wooden shelter behind them, as they made their way slowly around the country roads. The woman holds what is either a small shovel or spade used in their work. Standing and apparently preaching to them is a cleanly dressed carpenter, his saw held in his left hand. The building behind them, on the opposite side of the road, is a church, from which a large congregation has just emerged.

One of the most physically demanding tasks of the year was clearing snow in the winter. Brendekilde’s The Rest (1887) shows a younger man taking a short break from cutting a track through to the elderly lady’s farmhouse. The blade of his spade is flat, confirming that it’s used to dig through compacted snow and pile the slabs seen behind him.

In Brendekilde’s Home for Dinner from 1917, a young girl holding some fresh fish stands talking to a man with a spade.

The following year, Brendekilde painted a gardening story, in Afternoon Work (1918). A younger man is out on his finely tilled vegetable patch in front of his thatched cottage, wielding his spade as a weapon. Standing just outside the door, behind him, is his young daughter, and through the window is an older woman, presumably his wife. Both are watching him intently, with an air of fear at what he is about to do. He is about to attack a small crop of molehills that have appeared freshly in the midst of his seedling vegetable plants.

As Europeans and Americans started taking to the beaches, they realised how much fun it is to dig sand and build sandcastles using small buckets and spades.

This is William Dyce’s finely detailed view of Pegwell Bay, Kent, on the coast of south-east England, out of season, at the end of a fine day in early October. Visitors to the beach are wrapped for warmth as well as modesty. In the distance, a group of donkeys are being taken to graze for the night, after the day’s work being hired out for children to ride. In the foreground, at the left, a child holds a spade, although there is precious little sand suitable for sandcastles.

Later in the nineteenth century, at Le Tréport on the Channel coast of France near Dieppe, Évariste Carpentier’s Le Tréport, Bathing Time shows progress in the development of beach costume and culture. A young girl in the left foreground is playing with her bucket and spade, while her older brother is admiring the fashionable young woman parading her new clothes. A far cry indeed from the grave-digger.