I don’t know if I’m phrasing this right, but I just noticed that even royal portraits in Europe all looked very flat and un-detailed up until like the 1600s, and there was another massive improvement in the 1700s when paintings started to look infinitely more realistic than they did in the medieval era.
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Partly new techniques being (Re)discovered and used from then on, and new focus on different style aspects.
But the main part was financial. Europe centralized a lot after the medieval age ended, a lot more money was kept in the hands of monarchs, trade started to flourish much more than before.
So rich people could afford very lengthy drawing processes from someone who dedicated all his life to painting.
And well yeah “My ancestor/rival has such a detailed expensive painting, I need an even better one to show how great I am” starts to become a thing when you have more money than you can ever spend.
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