AHC: More photorealistic art in 15XX and later.

When I first saw this picture I thought it had to be fake because it looks more like an early photo than a 15XX Century pic. But it is apparently real. So how could we have more of this mind blowing good art?

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Just some info's on the painter:

Giovanni Niccolo (also Giovanni Nicolao) was a Jesuit Italian painter who in 1583 was sent to found a seminary of painting, named the Seminary of Painters in Portuguese Japan. This seminary, founded in 1590 and exiled from the Japanese archipelago fewer than three decades later, would become the largest school of western painting in Asia. While there, Niccolo also created devotional objects for use by Japanese Catholic churches and converts. His preferred images were primarily the Salvator Mundi and Madonna
It seems he mostly preferred to paint boring old religious old paintings.
 
Part of the problem is that certainly until the Rennaisance, and really more towards the 16th Century the money was in the church, so in order to earn a living, it was basically a requirement to paint a lot of religious stuff to order.

Then the nobles and rich merchants began to be able to afford, and show interest in, art and again they went for religious scenes for the most part, with portraits evolving out of that highly figurative and symbolic style to make the patron look his best.

Perhaps what we need is for somebody of great power and prestige, perhaps a Medici or a Sforza, to see an artist's photorealistic sketch done as a study in drawing, shading etc. and commision a painting in the same style (he'd probably need to be relatively good looking to do this as well). If he can set a trend, we might be on to something.
 
I'd say there was a fair amount of realistic art floating around before that time period. Maybe not "photo-realistic" but certainly getting there. Check out The Arnolfini Wedding by Van Eyk (which even captured the reflection of the painter in a mirror in the background, and The Ambassadors by Hans Holbien.
 
"Oil painting north of the alps from 1400 or so on" mostly fits your bill, and church art can perfectly well be realistic by our usual understanding of the term. Whether photorealistic art is actually by default good art is a rather more problematic proposition-as is the question of realism in art altogether, but that is somewhat peripheral.
EDIT Also lots of oil painting south of the alps after, I don't know, 1490 or so to pull an number from somewhere.
 
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