Why there are no hyper-realistic paintings from the past?
Don't know if this is the best sub to ask this but this curiosity struck me recently: why don't we have amazing realistic paintings from centuries ago like we do sculptures?
Example of the incredible realism and details in an sculpture from the 1600s by Lorenzo Bernini (notice the finger pressure in the skin carved into marble)
Examples of a few modern hyper-realistic paintings: 1, 2, 3
The best I could find was this painting by Alexei Antónov which is pretty recent, and it still doesn't get anywhere close to the level of detail and realism in my modern examples and it's always of objects and never people, why is that?
Is it because of modern materials? What type of materials would be missing for someone from centuries ago to paint something like this?
Or is it that people from that time didn't really want a hyper realistic painting so no one bothered to paint one (kinda weird considering how they loved having realistic portraits back then)?
Posted Dec 9, 2019, 5:45 PM UTC
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