Medieval Art’s Leap Toward Realism

Medieval artists literally deleted God from the map to make room for science.

In the Catalan Atlas from 1375, the artist replaced the usual religious icons with a man

holding a quadrant, proving they were obsessed with accuracy, not just faith. Then you have the

Ghent Altarpiece. This thing weighs over a ton and Jan van Eyck used oil paint technology

to create textures so real they look like photographs. It was a massive jump from flat egg

tempera to hyper-realistic layers. They were not just painting saints, they were basically

inventing 4K resolution five hundred years ago.