That really is incredible. Looks like a 1700s decorative item.
We often think that art was truly awoken during the renaissance and people started to understand the human form and realism then, but ancient art shows people have been doing it since the dawn of history.
What’s weird to me is how, for a period between the decline of Rome and the 1400s, Europeans seemed to forget how to realistically depict people in art.
People didn’t forget. That’s been thoroughly debunked by (art) historians. Society changed so art changed with it. Thinking that realism is the pinnacle of art is just a cultural point of view. Medieval art worked with completely different ideas, so it makes no sense to compare it with Renaissance art.
If you look at modern art it would be easy to think that 21st century artist had absolutely no clue how to depict nature, even though it’s clear it’s a stylistic choice to create such works.
Modern art has loads of examples of people making all sorts of things. Picasso is notable for mastering realism before going into abstract art. Realism still goes strong today and still serves as a foundation for learning art professionally before branching out into individual styles.
And I’m not saying realism is the pinnacle of art. I’m an artist myself. I just know that virtually every society made rapid gains into mastering realism pretty quickly, but I don’t know of any examples of truly realistic work or high craftsmanship in the European Middle Ages until cathedrals became a big thing.
My amazement isn’t that this is “realistic=good”, it’s that amateurs can’t crank something like this out easily. That’s what makes it impressive—someone was either devoting loads of leisure time to studying the human form and how to represent it independently 3500 years ago, or people were being taught it. Most people who do some art today with loads of resources at their hands and leisure time but no formal education don’t reach this point, which makes it all the more impressive that ancient people did. Egypt is also flooded with impressive work and people are amazed with it 6000 years later, and I used to think they were unique. But I’m seeing more and more that societies basically everywhere achieved similar degrees of craftsmanship.
We often think that art was truly awoken during the renaissance and people started to understand the human form and realism then, but ancient art shows people have been doing it since the dawn of history.
What’s weird to me is how, for a period between the decline of Rome and the 1400s, Europeans seemed to forget how to realistically depict people in art.