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Comment by asveikau | Hacker News Reader

I like the photorealism in some of these images. They look somewhat like contemporary people even though it's more than 200 years ago.

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It's currently closed for renovation and set to reopen in November but if you have a chance to go see the Frick Collection in New York, I strongly recommend it for two of the most photorealistic paintings I've ever seen: the portraits of Sir Thomas More [1] and Thomas Cromwell [2] by Hans Holbein the Younger (sadly the digitized versions are low resolution and don't do them justice).

The paintings are 500 years old but look like photographic portraits, down to the individual hairs in the stubble on More's chin. Realism was in vogue at the time but there weren't many other artists who were as good as Hans Holbein.

[1] https://collections.frick.org/objects/100/sir-thomas-more

[2] https://collections.frick.org/objects/101/thomas-cromwell

Thats an obsessive level of detail for that era. Later Rembrandt's school were focusing more on the play of shadows on given subject and its surroundings, but most of the details were not to this level, at least not those I've seen up close (but still some parts were pretty crazy, ie embroidered collar or vein structure of wrinkled skin of an old woman).

Last time I was in New York I had lunch not far from there. Noted for next time.

People haven't changed much. We just wear cheaper clothes.

No disagreement about the excellent art.

Obviously clothing and hairstyles change. More recently, average BMI is higher, or people are more likely to be tattooed. I'm sure there's other differences that aren't coming to mind.

But even setting aside any of that, it's pretty rare that I see a portrait that old and I think it could conceivably be recent.

even the amount of tattoos depends on culture and region. lots of cultures around the world practice some form of tattooing. even the BMI thing varies somewhat because different BMIs are healthy for different ethnic groups.

This is a tangent to the mention of cultural BMI, but I recently came across these:

Ritual fattening of Massa men

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/32978275_Guru_-fatt...

Leblouh, the force feeding of girls to fatten them.

https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-tradition-leblouh-in...

Well the clothing and hairstyle in the top photo looks pretty modern to me

People haven't changed much over the last 2000 years I think, just different tools and terminologies

Its funny that you say that since photography was invented in France in that period. Was it the paintings that were photorealistic, or the photos that were painterly?

Mirrors did exists since a long time though.

You can substitute "photorealistic" with "looks like the square (or rectangle) picture in the mirror".

Turns out photographic pictures did capture that "image in the mirror" picture. Funnily enough, using... Mirrors.

> ... or the photos that were painterly?

The answer is simply no. The real world doesn't work like that: photons/mirrors/prisms/our eyes "capturing" photons. Physics vs dialectic if you want.

The nature of the photographic mechanism becomes a new definition of “reality,” but it is still a cultural byproduct, leaving Realness to be still uncovered in all kinds of ways

> You can substitute "photorealistic" with "looks like the square (or rectangle) picture in the mirror".

Reflections in the mirror have depth and motion. Even without the viewer or the subject moving, the viewer can see depth in the mirror that isn't in a photo. In those respects, photos are more like paintings than mirrors. Of course, in other respects, they're more like mirrors.

In early photography history there was a pictorialist movement where people used special sort focus lenses to introduce more of a painterly quality. These lenses, such as Rodenstock Imagon still exist and are sought after.

So what you’re saying is that the mirror is the measure, and that the projections based on photons, etc. are fundenmentally evidenced by the form of the mirror image?

For how photorealistic paintings can be made with little painting skill, a setup with mirrors, and lots of patience:

Tim's Vermeer https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3089388

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