Comments by "John Peric" (@johnperic6860) on "UsefulCharts"
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I would be cautious to act as if the art that survives represents the best of the era.
The art that's most likely to survive is that made by the average person.
Lets say you go and grab 100 people of the street right now and ask them to draw the best picture of a human that they can. Chances are, none of them will be fantastic, maybe some would be decent, but non what anyone would call mastery.
Now, lets say you're an archaeologist, you find 100 surviving depictions of the human form carved in tablets or drawn on somesort of paper. Just like with our previous scenario, chances are none of them will be fantastic, some bad, some mid, and some decent - what the average person can do.
I would say that if you're trying to find a reference of what the best in society were capable of, looking at bust is a better proxy for how good artist were at capturing the human form (as statues will be more likely to survive the test of time in greater numbers than some drawing on paper).
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