If we for example look at a medieval painting of the crucifixion, the roman soldiers will be dressed in the garments of a medieval soldier, and the apostles will be dressed like a medieval monk. Generalising a bit, this seems to me to be a dominant trait up until some time in the late renaissance/early baroque, where artists began to render their historical subjects more 'correctly'.

Can we assume that people in the middle ages knew that their subjects were not dressed in this way, or did they in fact not, meaning that the more historically correct renditions we see in later era's are due to an increase in historical knowledge? I have been guessing that is more due to the tendency of the time to represent things symbolically rather than literally, but I would love to hear any thoughts or suggestions for reading.

I guess this example is also an attempt to get at a larger question ; How did history think of history? Were people of that time in any way 'interested' in knowing how people lived before them (besides the very outspoken interests in lineage), what tools they used etc. - or can we imagine a time when people were 'unaware' that things had ever looked different than in their own time?