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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It’s not so much that no one knew how to do something more photorealistic. Rather, it just wasn’t in style in that place at that time. Yes, even back in the medieval times and beyond, society had trends and fashions just like it does today. Literally ye olde meme.
For most of human history, if you wanted to make a living as any kind of artist, you earned your bread by the graces of nobility. These were the people who could actually afford to commission your works. And if you were a smart artist, you would tend to make the kinds of things that they liked, the way they liked it. All those nobles were constantly trying to stay hip and trendy. And often, those trends were to be surrounded by stylized art that was decidedly *not* photorealistic. So, a lot of surviving art from those periods are not photorealistic, not because artists were bad and couldn’t do it, but because that’s simply what the art *buyers* expected to see.
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