Your question is basically a request to explain the whole development of Western painting and drawing. For most of its history Western painting and graphic art has been quite busy conveying the realm of 3D onto a 2D medium. What this artist basically does is a very skilled use of perspective and selection of viewpoint.

First the style... trompe l'oeil

The fooling of the eye (trompe l'oeil) by artists has in fact had quite a long history in Western art and for a long time it has been the focus. Only with the advent of expressionism, abstract art, to name a few, it became less important. I think it goes too far for this forum to give you an entire essay on the development of the pictorial arts, so what I would like to do, is to help you look for it and give you some examples in art where it was used to full effect. In art, the evidence is for all to see. I will not touch on things like "beauty" or "good" as they are subjective, but will keep myself strictly to art history.

The attempt of fooling the eye is rooted in an instinctive or even deep understanding of perspective and sometimes the clever use of optics, coupled with the desire to mimic or even surpass the natural world. I will give you a very rough and basic overview as there is so much to see and so much to discover in this area.

Pliny the Elder in his work "Naturalis Historia" tells the tale of Zeuxis and Parrhasius. Zeuxis painted grapes with such skill that birds flew down to peck at them. Parrhasius painted a curtain that fooled even the discerning eye of his fellow-painter, who tried to draw it to one side. One of the first examples of fooling the eye. Alas this is just the story, no works of either painters survive. The story and others like it influenced western art for centuries.

The earliest examples are surviving Roman wall paintings (the so-called "Second Style" of the first century, see for instance the Villa P. Fannius Synistor at Boscoreale) in which the painter tried to create the optical illusions. Creating the illusion by using linear perspective, shadows and foreshortening. There the painter was mainly interested in a realistic depiction of architectural details.

The rediscovery of perspective and the influence of light in the late medieval/Northern Renaissance world gave us the Altar piece in Ghent (1432), which may seem none too special to a current tourist, It's pictorial depictions stand firmly in late medieval tradition, but there is something funny about this work. The shadows in the altarpiece were painted in such a way as to extend the natural light in the actual chapel through the actual windows where the object stood. Whether the altarpiece was opened or closed, the light in the painting reflects the actual situation. Thereby creating the illusion of depth. The painter painted it in such a way that the best view is from where the viewer is standing: straight in front of the painting in its original chapel. For a visitor who had never seen television, be it HD or not, or photographs the impact must have been tremendous.

In 1435 Leon Battista Alberti published his book "De Pictura" and linear perspective became all the rage. Linear perspective basically tries to emulate how you see the world: with a horizon and one or more vanishing points. A painter just followed the lines and elongated or shortened people and objects as the lines dictated. Soon everyone was playing around with viewpoints and perspective.

Check out the oculus of the Camera degli Sposi by Mantegna: when you stand directly beneath it, it looks as though you're looking at an opening on what is really a regular ceiling. It's quite old, but it is not hard to imagine what it must have looked like when it was new, and what the onlooker must have experienced. I'm staying away from Ucello and will move on quickly to a little bit later. Some painters started to play around with optics. The Ambassadors (1533) by Hans Holbein is one of the best examples of anamorphism: the brown smears in the foreground is actually a skull which can only be viewed when looking across the painting, not when you stand in front of it. The "Basket of fruit" (c. 1599) by Caravaggio plays another optical trick: looking at the painting you see a basket on a ledge, but look closely and you see a shadow under the ledge giving the impression that the basket is bigger then the ledge.

History is rife with examples by painters, unfortunately now forgotten by most. One of my favorites is Samuel van Hoogstraten: check out his still life from 1664: just a piece of wood with two ribbons attached in which letters are stuck. Off course one of the visual masters was Johannes Vermeer. You may know his paintings, but really you don't. Let's look at the Art of Painting (166-68), now look at it real close. No, closer. Look at the way he painted the curtain. Now look at it from a distance again. Se how your eye blends all the shapes together and makes it "realistic"? He may or may not have used a camera obscura or other optical devices, but here you see how he used optics to trick the human eye. Trompe l'oeil, ilussionism, all part of art history in which the painter tried to deceive the onlooker. Even Rembrandt took part in it: Girl in a Picture Frame (1641) actually has the painted person grab the frame of the picture..on the outside! Some believe that the Goldfinch (1654) by Carel Fabritius was actually mounted on a wall in such a way that the unsuspecting visitor would think it was an actual bird.

Between 1688-94 Andrea Pozzo painted the Apotheosis of St. Ignatius in the Sant'Ignazio in Rome. Standing under it, you feel like you are watching into endless space. Just imagine looking up at that.

In the centuries that followed artists would play around, one that should be mentioned is the secret portrait of Bonnie Prince Charlie (date unknown) which can only be viewed when looking at it using a cylinder. The frescoes of the Wurzburg Residence (1750-1753) very much come from a long tradition and are simply breathtaking to see.

Art streams like Photorealism, Surrealism, Hyperrealism and such stand very much within an old tradition.

Then the precision..

There is one more thing to consider. There are only a couple of ways in which you can paint or draw in a photorealistic way: you either have a stable -preferably neutral- lighting situation whereby you can always come back and get the same lighting conditions, which do not influence your colors, reflection or shadows, or you take a HD photo and use it as reference. Because painting or drawing under natural light means that shades and shadows change. There is a famous anecdote of Monet painting a row of trees furiously and repeatedly during one session because the light kept changing.

Stable light was simply impossible for an 18th century painter. Under candle light or even under an old fashioned lightbulb paint colors change and pencil shading changes. It is only with the advent of lighting that mimics sunlight that you can create a stable lighting situation. (look closely at the light in the video, it doesn;'t change(

If a painter did achieve an exceptional image using optical trickery, we immediately assume they used optical tools (Vermeer anyone?).

Was someone able to match this level of skill in creating something lifelike? They certainly were: Durer, Holbein, van Eyck, Breughel, Hals, Vermeer, the list goes on...

I hope I have given you new paths to venture on..