http://www.drublair.com/workshops/images/ticastepweb.jpg

http://www.drublair.com/workshops/tica.html

It would be hard to out do this with today's tools

Vermeer (17th century) is also pretty good and they didn't have cameras at the time (well, they did have camera-like things perhaps, like the camera obscura):

http://www.sas.upenn.edu/theatrearts/whinnery/131/Paintings/vermeer.jpg

Wooooooow, the first one is really amazing! I don't know a good "realistic" painting...

We're talking "most realistic painting", not just "most realistic portrait".

My vote goes to Julian Beever's art. He draws with chalk on a flat surface, but preduces a phenominal 3D effect.

This work, for example, is drawn on a car park but makes it look like someone has dug a hole and found an ancient mosaic:
http://users.skynet.be/J.Beever/images/mosaic.jpg

His Vaio Laptop is great too:
http://users.skynet.be/J.Beever/images/portab3.jpg

More here:
http://web-owls.com/2006/07/14/julian-beevers-pavement-art-illusions/
and here:
http://users.skynet.be/J.Beever/pave.htm

>>Vermeer (17th century) is also pretty good and they didn't have cameras at the time
I'm not sure the Search-Engines-Web.com's painter needed a camera too ;)
I have to say that is a good work. The question is: why? To spend 70 hours for something which will hit Digg's home page for 10 minutes, that is Art of 21st century :-/