Authenticity and more.

Few days ago I came back from a trip to NY city that continued to Boston and it's neighbouring towns, as expected part of it was quiet and cultural, I mean by that lots of museums and galleries exhibiting all sorts of contemporary and classic paintings. An interesting observation though, after many days of this, and i should explain here that I'm talking about classical and mostly medieval works. The imagination of painters/artists was startling even when depicting serious and well documented scenes. I will explain myself by giving some examples, two different painters one Italian and the other representing a German school, painted La Piata, a known sculpture and theme, the surrounding Jerusalem, was a European typical paysage in both instances, with houses coming from middle ages Europe, the dresses as well, even the green pasture, another good example was when a Dutch painter decided to transport the french city of Lyon with it's cathedral and streets to the Mediterranean sea and it's waves, a third in Napoli with a Turk merchant in the harbor wearing everything Turkish including his turbans and moustache except his rather short skirt like an old roman war skirts showing his legs and knees, not Turkish or Muslim at all. Many more paintings depicted the Roman soldiers around the body of Jesus at the bottom of the cross in modern medieval armors and dresses, so was Mary and the rest of the group holding the body transported in time. Even ships at different known historic battles were transposed from different epochs. OK you get the picture. What bothers me with the whole affair is not the poor authenticity of the painters or their abundant imagination, we look at art more in terms of colour blending and details of drawing rather than historic facts, but think how many historians and writers of books ,stories, or even sacred books gave us through the times, images, scenes and ideas that were as colourful and imaginative as the painters/artists did in their paintings, themselves impressed by artists sometimes, or even less important sketches by less important painters some other times. It makes me wonder how accurate even some of the best historic books or some of the sacred texts are when written tens or even hundreds of years after the events took place. We do live, and in some instances greatly under the influences of many of these historical or theological ideas that were written and reedited many years after the events took place. Are we somehow diminishing our faculties and our cognitive minds accepting one aspect and ignoring the other, or looking at the same material with different eyes ??