A thought I had halfway through reading this article: if, hypothetically, early Medieval European art had been lost, how would it be reconstructed by modern scholars?

Would they accurately capture the lack of 'naturalism' (i.e. that flat, almost cartoonish quality) that often strikes modern viewers of Medieval art, or would they make it 'better', interpolating the gap between Roman and Renaissance styles?

This article hints at the idea that classical sculpture can't have been painted like that, because _it looks bad_ and Romans couldn't possibly have thought it looked good, yet early Medieval art was — presumably — perfectly acceptable to the tastemakers of Medieval Europe.