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?
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There were always somewhat “realistic” artwork throughout history, but as other commenters point out a lot of the ‘cartoonish’ art you see in history was just the predomenant style at the time.
[Here are some fairly realistic portraits painted in Egypt around 100-200 A.D.](https://www.britishmuseum.org/blog/depicting-dead-ancient-egyptian-mummy-portraits)
And [here is an attempt at fairly realistic art in a fresco from Pompeii.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e1/House_of_Julia_Felix_still_life_eggs.jpg/800px-House_of_Julia_Felix_still_life_eggs.jpg?20110721202131) It’s not quite as realistic as reneissance masters, but neither were most artists from the reneissance period that we do not remember today.
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