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

Until the Greeks, the idea of humanism wasn’t particularly valued. The time, costs, and effort required to make artwork meant that artists focused on cultural significance over physical representation (also heavily limited by resources like pigment). Vénus de Renancourt is a 23000 year old totem of virility (there are quite a few Stone Age Venus totems ranging from 25000 years ago), as such you have emphasis on the breasts and hips. These sculptures share a striking resemblance to our own perceptions of the human body with regards to emphasis and importance.

I can’t find the exact source, but there was a psychological experiment where they mapped the human body with regards to importance, the hands, head, eyes, sensory organs, and reproductive systems were much larger than other areas. This is akin to most stages of art development as well, novice and intermediate artists will often draw the hands, eyes, and head larger in proportion. (Sensory homonculous)

Christianity and the concept of god as human (Jesus) led to more life like depictions of ourselves and gods. The flatness in perspective is attributed to an idea of how it was thought the human eye saw things, like an inverse projection.

Humanism made a major comeback in the renaissance, the explosion of scientific and technical development emphasized humanity as having a likeness to the gods, as a result the gods became more human and a pinnacle of human form developed. This has shifted over time with different forms, like the more portly Rubenesque forms, or the masculine dominated forms of Michelangelo. Furthermore we got the camera obscura, the pinhole camera, which allowed artists to directly trace over projections. Something interesting to note is the number of left handed depictions of people during this time, likely because this method mirrored the subject.

TLDR: art is a time consuming and expensive process, as such we focused of representation of significance. Technological and philosophical growth lead to more human centric representations.