Why are humans depicted in paintings from ancient civilizations like different than now? Weren’t there artists who could paint realistic paintings?

Question

Weren’t there artists at that time who could draw humans for what they actually looked like. For instance, look at the paintings of kings from the 17th Century or before.

In: Other

Answer 1

So this goes back to a similar question of “Why do medieval paintings look so childish?”. You look at some depictions of Edward IV and it looks like it was done by a 4th grader.

There are two parts to this, the first is that the skill to make something have depth (not deep emotionally but depth where there appears to be a z axis) is pretty challenging to do on a 2d surface. The Romans didn’t do it particularly well. They were getting there, but then *dark ages!!*

We tend to undersell how impactful the Renaissance was, IMHO, and it is in the Renaissance where the techniques to draw in three dimensions came to form. More info below;

[https://theweek.com/articles/459667/how-did-humans-learn-paint-3-dimensions](https://theweek.com/articles/459667/how-did-humans-learn-paint-3-dimensions)