Why do we rarely see ultra-realistic paintings from ancient/medieval times, given the fact that many humans have a natural talent of creating them today with minimal items?

Question

I’m asking because paintings, whether on the wall of a cave, or on generally of a King or Queen in ancient times look quite weird. Not necessarily in a bad way, it has its own cool art style, but they are not realistic or anywhere close.

If human beings have a natural talent, photographic memory or incredible artistic ability today where they can make TikToks of painting ultra realistic art with fire, chalk or charcoal etc Why do we almost never see realism in painting/artistic history? I’m talking paintings specifically not sculptures btw

In: Other

Answer 1

Because the purpose of art is not necessarily to be ultra-realistic. There’s actually a wide mix of art styles present in ancient art, and the style depends largely on where you are looking, even when they were areas with a wide amount of trade.

When people are openly mixing and there’s still this kind of distinct style, it implies that it’s not simply down to individual talent, but down to some manner of cultural choice.

For the opposite, you can see that Greek statues very early on made a huge leap from the earliest Micenean Greek statues (extremely stylized, very static poses) to trying to emulate Egyptian Ka statues (more realistic, and implying movement) once those gained favor in Greece. Unfortunately we have to look at the statues because that’s often a lot of what survives.

It’s often claimed that something like the Renaissance is an improvement on the past because they invented things like 3-point perspective. This isn’t true, and we actually have Roman villa paintings depicting 3-point perspective, as well as some of the hallmarks of the early Renaissance style. But it should be noted that not even all the Renaissance painters were trying to perfectly represent reality in their paintings either.

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/247017

https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/247009

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c9/Pompeii_-_Casa_dei_Vettii_-_Ixion.jpg

Art isn’t strictly about capturing reality, and the existence of the term “warts and all” is a reference to this, with Cromwell demanding that he be depicted perfectly and not embellished.