I mean, you take one look at Greek statues and Roman busts and you realize that people figured how to aim for realism, at least when it came to the human body and faces, over 2000 years ago.
Yet, unlike sculpture, paintings and drawings remained, uh, “immature” for centuries afterwards (to my limited knowledge, it was the Italian Renaissance that started making realistic paintings). Why?
First reason is the knowledge and understanding to paint like this has come and gone. We have paintings from Egypt from 100 BC that is very realistic. They are known as the Fayyum portraits.
Also, paint isn’t the most long lasting of materials, so less painted anything still survives. While many don’t know about it, but Greek and Roman statues were painted.
I didn’t know about those Fayyum portraits, they’re amazing!
They all look like me when I look at my reflection when I’m tripping balls