The Lascaux Caves

Anna RascheinOctober 4, 2010

The Hall of the Bulls

The images in the Hall of the Bulls are amongst the most striking in all of Palaeolithic art: 130 figures, including 36 representations of animals and some 50 geometric signs. This extensive frieze is composed of three animal themes – horses (17 individuals), cattle (11 cows and bulls) and deer (6 stags) – which recur consistently in the various parts of the cave. Exceptionally, a bear is also depicted.

The totality includes 161 graphic entities, of which 58 are figurative (mostly animals), and 46 are various geometric signs – quadrangular, branching, rectilinear, nested elements, cruciform and groups of dots. There are also 57 indeterminate figures that may be signs, but that also may be sketches for animal figures.We are now entering a space that has been called the "Sistine Chapel of Prehistory" – one of the pinnacles of human creative intelligence.

The Axial Gallery

This brown and black painted horse has also been engraved, in particular to emphasise the outline of the head and to highlight the mane through a series of fine parallel incisions.The figure is surrounded by small white calcite efflorescences, which partially cover it.

The Passageway

Painted and Engraved Horse

There are four panels on the left wall of the Nave – those of the Seven Ibexes, the Imprint, the Great Black Cow and the Crossed Bison. The right wall contains only the Frieze of the Swimming Stags. The slope of the floor is the cause of this uneven distribution. The species depicted include horses, ibexes, stags, bison and aurochs, but but in quite different proportions. As in every other part of the cave, horses are the dominant theme, with twenty-seven separate depictions in the Nave. The aurochs, on the other hand, appears only once, but dominates through its sheer size and its position at the centre of this vast tableau. There are also nine ibexes, six five bison, and six stags.

The Nave

Felines are not often depicted in Palaeolithic parietal art, with the exception of the Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc cave, and they are often assigned a specific place within a sanctuary. The felines in Lascaux are no exception to this.There are six in all, and they appear on both sites of the entrance to the passageway, in a strictly symmetrical composition. On each wall, two felines face the back of the gallery and a third faces the entrance. The graphic execution of the figures is of average quality, a characteristic they share with other depictions felines in parietal art.

Chamber of Felines

On a wall space of some thirty square metres, and an average ceiling height of 3.5 metres, the Apse contains over a thousand figures. They include nearly 500 animals and 600 geometric signs or lines. They appear on the walls and ceiling, and with no interruption. Their density increases at the entrance at the far end, and reaches its peak in the Apsidiole, which is located at the base of the Shaft in the farthest part of this gallery. The very soft limestone surface provides a partial explanation for such a graphic outpouring. Lascaux's fame is essentially based on the paintings in the Hall of the Bulls, the Axial Gallery, and the Nave. And yet, if we count the number of figures in the Apse, the Passageway, the Nave and the Chamber of the Felines, we see that the art of Lascaux is dominated by engravings.

The Apse

The Shaft contains only a limited number of figures: eight in all. Four are figures of animals (a horse, a bison, a bird and a rhinoceros) and three others are geometric shapes (dots and hooks). In the centre of the composition, the eye is drawn to a human figure. One notes on the right-hand wall a horse, and the left-hand wall contains all the other figures in a space about three meters square. This arrangement, made famous by its narrative potential, is one of the rare examples in which the subjects and themes refer to a specific episode, leaving us to imagine the possibility that this is a message to be interpreted

The Shaft

Lascaux Caves

Source