I mean, you take one look at Greek statues and Roman busts and you realize that people figured how to aim for realism, at least when it came to the human body and faces, over 2000 years ago.
Yet, unlike sculpture, paintings and drawings remained, uh, “immature” for centuries afterwards (to my limited knowledge, it was the Italian Renaissance that started making realistic paintings). Why?
Art isn’t a progression. “Realism” isn’t necessarily a goal.
If capturing some subject in the most naturalistic way possible was the goal of art, there would be no need for paintings after the invention of the camera, and sculpture would be obsolete because of 3d scanning. Art must be something beyond capturing nature, otherwise there would be no reason for humans to do it.