Repub prof could explain it better than I.
Some experts say there are two different types of artists, visual and haptic. Put simply, haptics slightly enlarge items they want to emphasize. A guy by the name of Rosenfeld, of Carnegie, PA, initially came up with it, I've been led to believe.
I believe that most people instinctively and unconsciously draw things that seem more important to them relatively larger than they really are. With the figure, this would be the head and the hands.
I did this for years, until my current teacher explained to me the merits of measuring what one is drawing. Only then did I realize that I had been drawing heads too large, out of proportion to the body. Conversely, in one of Michael Crichton's novels, he mentioned how small the decapitated head of one of the character's looked as it lay on the ground. Heads typically being no larger than 8 or 9 inches.
But my point is that there may not necessarily be 2 kinds of artists, visual and hepatic? so much as it's just that "visual," or "realistic" drawing is something that must be learned, while the other is apparently instinctive. Or that is how it seems to me, anyway.
RP, I think you pointed out that religious paintings done before the Renaissance often show the primary subjects, Jesues, Mary, etc. rendered much larger than the lesser figures shown grouped around? Although this would have been a conscious decision.