I have just finished getting all the photos together for my book on Augustine. Too bad that we don’t have a portrait of Augustine done by his contemporaries. Not that skill was lacking. I am so amazed at the talent of the artists of the Fayum mummy portraits in Egypt, done more or less at the same time when Jesus was on earth.

This was more or less the type of people who surrounded Jesus, the Apostles, and later Augustine (even if, in 400 years, the fashion had probably changed).
I am wondering why we had to wait another 1400 years to see the same realism in art.