– Why were ancient drawings or paintings so unrealistic?

Question

I’ve always found it interesting how drawing and paintings from the ancient era through the medieval era look almost cartoonish. Then (seemingly) all of the sudden people discovered how to make realistic artwork during the renaissance era. Why is that the case?

In: 17

Answer 1

To a large degree, people didn’t make art that looked realistic because that wasn’t what they felt was important. They wanted the art to tell a story or convey information about the subject, not to be an accurate illustration of what things looked like. The notion that art should be an accurate depiction of exactly how things looked was just not the goal of the artists, so they didn’t produce art like that.