Artwork is not proof of the shape of the earth.

And dare I say, many "good Catholics" were deceived by the Globe deception. I'm sure quite a few artists were among them.

You can go to heaven and have objectively wrong ideas about the shape of the earth. That wouldn't derail any beatification or canonization process, or example. Especially considering virtually EVERYONE believed that at the time.

Now if this were a time period where everyone knew the earth was flat, and there were no mass deception in place, then YES, you should look askance and wonder what's their problem believing something as crazy as "the earth is a spinning ball hurtling through the vacuum of space in no special location in the hinterlands of the universe".

You do realize the "Big Bang" only has credibility in the context of spinning planets, gravity, and all that. Right?

Imagine them trying to push "we all just happened by random chance" if the earth was a closed system, a world under a dome, with no "outer space" to visit or explore. A much tougher sell, don't you think?

My last point: even when you point to respectable minds and souls (Aristotle, etc.) suggesting that the earth was a globe, they never, not for a moment, got on board the full NASA package. You have to keep that in mind. It's like they never went down that road, or took it that far. Do you think St. Thomas Aquinas would believe in a pressurized system with no container? Atmosphere on the earth, right next to a near-perfect vacuum of space -- with no container in between the two? Somehow I doubt it. He was a rational man, and believing in pressurized gasses being contained without a container is simply not reasonable. It has never been observed. Nor can it be demonstrated or proven by experiment that it's even *possible*, much less that it actually happens.

Or airplanes. There was no flight of any kind back then. Did anyone even believe that the earth moved or rotated? That's a pretty big part of the "NASA package" that I doubt anyone would believe back then.