You can achieve similarly striking paintings by projecting a very cool photograph into paper and then painting it over the projection. I remember as a kid when my father brought a projector for the weekend, and my sister and me spend the time copying photographs this way. It helps to project the image upside down, so you can focus better in the colors than in the 3d structures.
Before electronic (or even electric) projectors were around, professional artists were using device called a camera obscura[1] with similar results (though obviously dependent on natural illumination).
There is much debate over whether great painters such as Vermeer used a camera obscura as early as the 17th century.
