You are right about most things here, but I'll add a minor remark: "photorealism" is an established term for describing paintings that have certain characterist

You are right about most things here, but I'll add a minor remark: "photorealism" is an established term for describing paintings that have certain characteristics of a photograph, for example, depth of focus. It's a 20th century movement and in strict cultural sense, Van Eyck is not photorealistic (he sometimes was deliberately skewing perspective or objects proportions). Instead, Gerhard Richter's "photo art" is an earlier example of photorealism, Chuck Close is a later one. The most interesting thing about photorealism is that it actually opened new ways for painting, i.e. photography was used as a tool to better understand visual perception.