# Why didn't medieval artists paint more lifelike/true-to-life portraits? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [November 1, 2017, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-didnt-medieval-artists-paint-more-lifelike-true-to-life-portraits/800348 "2017-11-01T00:23:22Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2017, 6:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-didnt-medieval-artists-paint-more-lifelike-true-to-life-portraits/800348/22 "2017-11-01T18:33:41Z")
> [@GreenWyvern](#): > > … is depicted with almost photo-realism … From what I’ve read in threads here before (although excuse me for not searching and finding them right now) use of this wording is telling and deserves emphasis. Yes, the use of perspective as a technique during the Renaissance impacted mightily what was considered “realistic”, but probably more so what we consider “realistic” in a two-dimensional artwork today is heavily biased by our current constant exposure to photography and the artificiality that medium imposes on our perceptions. The reality that was important to capture, and the way to represent that reality, was not always concordant with how a photograph approaches the task. ---
**Author:** ![TSBG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/77aa72/32.png) [@TSBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TSBG)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2017, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-didnt-medieval-artists-paint-more-lifelike-true-to-life-portraits/800348/23 "2017-11-01T19:39:21Z")
> [@Lucas\_Jackson](#): > > Your posts suggest you’re not very familiar with either author’s argument. Hockey’s standing as an artist carries as much weight, if not more, than historians. He is after all an actual artist - not just a theorist. History is full of incidences of discoveries that were paradigm shifts in contemporary thinking that was firmly rejected by the experts of the day only to be proven right in the end. > > The fact the you essentially Godwinized the thread by bringing up Von Daniken is ludicrous. There is nothing even remotely comparable between the two. You are also wrong that the camera obscura was unknown technology. I’m a TV and film producer. I know nothing about the development of film and video technology. The fact that Hockney paints doesn’t make him an art historian. The camera obscura under whatever name had been known long before the Renaissance. Hockney’s argument is that it came into use as an aid to more realistic portraiture during the Renaissance is what art historians dispute. ---
**Author:** ![TSBG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/77aa72/32.png) [@TSBG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TSBG)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2017, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-didnt-medieval-artists-paint-more-lifelike-true-to-life-portraits/800348/24 "2017-11-01T19:41:57Z")
An interesting side note on the realism of medieval portraiture is the way people are depicted as walking, with toes pointed down. I had noticed this and assumed it was some stylistic convention, but according to this video it is actually an accurate representation of the medieval gait: [- YouTube](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EszwYNvvCjQ) ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2017, 8:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-didnt-medieval-artists-paint-more-lifelike-true-to-life-portraits/800348/25 "2017-11-01T20:07:57Z")
> [@davidmich](#): > > Yes I should have been more specific. I was referring to the early Middle Ages.5th-14th century. eg Pierre de Langtoft’s Chronicle of england" You’re talking about book illustration, not portraiture. ---
**Author:** ![md2000](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/73ab20/32.png) [@md2000](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/md2000)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2017, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-didnt-medieval-artists-paint-more-lifelike-true-to-life-portraits/800348/26 "2017-11-01T20:31:57Z")
Depends too on style. For example - the “walk like an Egyptian” pose was drawn by early Egyptian artists because it was the style, but the purpose of the style was to show the characteristics that made the object recognizable. Legs were most recognizable in side view, shoulders and chest in front view, face in silhouette. The goal was to show the person or god, not to create the equivalent of a photograph, or “exactly what we see”. A natural pose frozen in time was a fairly modern concept. Instead, the idea was to get the most impact out of a specific scene - the more costly a work of art in local terms, the more important that the message be apparent. Exactly - it was illustration. In poorer times they didn’t have art for art sake so much as to illustrate religion, stories and legends, allegories, or historic events. Even the Greeks who had amazingly life-like statues had moderately stylistic flat illustrations on their vases, for example. Similarly, before the renaissance you don’t see a lot of simple portraiture of anyone other than kings - and even then, most pictures are of important events like battles or coronations, not just “The royal family in their garden”. So again, the story not the portrait exactitude is the underlying impetus. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-didnt-medieval-artists-paint-more-lifelike-true-to-life-portraits/800348.md?page=1)