The most naive art: Altamira cave. Paleolithic art. Altamira Cave (Spain) - Art History Painting of the Altamira Cave in Spain

“After Altamira, everything is in decline! None of the modern artists could paint something like this."
Pablo Picasso

The discovery of the Altamira Cave revolutionized views on primitive art. True, this revolution took place, as they say, “in hindsight” and did not bring laurels to the discoverer himself, which can serve as another alarming sign for seekers of lifetime glory.

1879 In America, Iowa jeweler Abner Peeler invents the airbrush. In Paris, after many years of failures at official Salons, Edouard Manet finally receives recognition. The VII exhibition of the Itinerants takes place in St. Petersburg, after which Arkhip Kuindzhi leaves the partnership. Kazimir Malevich was born in Kyiv.

As for primitive art, by this moment its existence is, in general, no longer a sensation. In 1836, the famous archaeologist Edouard Larte found in the Grotto of Chaffaux (France) an engraved plate (published in 1861):

He also discovered an image of a mammoth on a piece of mammoth bone in the La Madeleine grotto:

During the same years, drawings were also found in other caves. The prominent paleontologist F. Garrigou, excavating layers in the “Black Salon” of the Nio cave in France in 1864, noticed on the wall drawings of wild horses, mountain goats, as well as bison, which had not lived in these parts for a long time. He was not particularly interested in what he saw. “There are drawings on the rock walls. Who could have made them? - he wrote in his notebook, and forgot about them (Nio’s “Black Salon” was officially “discovered” by science only in September 1906).

Directly in the year of the discovery of Altamira (according to other sources, a year earlier - in 1878), archaeologist L. Chiron discovered rock engravings in the Chabot Grotto (France), but photographs of the drawings were ignored by the scientific world.

The story of the discovery of the “Sistine Chapel” of prehistoric art, as the Altamira Cave would later be called, is surrounded by a romantic aura, but also full of genuine tragedy. A large Spanish landowner and lover of antiquities, Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola, after visiting Paris at the World Exhibition, where he saw the tools and decorations of primitive man, was inspired, remembered the stories of his servants about a cave in the mountains and, having taken several lessons in archeology, went on an excavation . According to legend, Sautuola’s attention was drawn to the drawings of red bulls that inhabited the vault of the cave by his six-year-old daughter Maria.

Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola. On the right is Maria de Sautuola at the age of eight.

After a short period of interest in the discovery of Sautuola and even support from archaeologists, a period of rejection and ridicule began, the end of which the Spanish lord did not wait for. He died in 1888, alone, accused of both forgery and madness, betrayed by those he trusted.

The point, apparently, is that Altamira’s drawings turned out to be a double-edged sword: on the one hand, Paleolithic finds increasingly undermined the position of the church, questioned the biblical views about the creation of the world and man, and in this confrontation between religion and science, any mistake of researchers, any the forgery would have been used by the clerics to great effect; on the other hand, the Altamira painting, the highest class of realistic monumental painting, in contrast to miniature crafts with rough, approximate images, did not fit into the doctrine of evolutionary teaching that dominated the scientific consciousness. It turned out that art developed according to some other laws than material culture, and already in such antiquity (15-11 thousand years ago, Magdalenian era) reached such mature forms. A heavy blow for the young science (Darwin's "Origin of Species..." was published some twenty years ago). It so happened that the Altamiran bulls could not suit either side and were doomed to be officially ignored.

Signature the photograph of the museum exhibit reads: “The press does not believe in the authenticity of Altamira.”
She doesn’t believe it, she doesn’t believe it, but the entire front page is given to her (and photo source - quesabesde.com).

The date of official recognition by scientists of cave paintings and paintings of the Ice Age, including the painting of Altamira, is considered to be August 14, 1902, when participants in the congress of French anthropologists visited in turn the recently discovered caves with rock paintings in Combarel, Font-de-Gaume and La Mout . New discoveries completely confirmed that Sautuola was right; all that remained was to admit the obvious. The historical moment was captured in a group photo at the entrance to the La Mut cave:
Very interesting and intelligible about the details of the discovery of Altamira and in general about the problem of significant discoveries, for some reason rejected by the scientific world (one could call this, for example, Altamira syndrome; although, probably, they already called it something like that a long time ago, having forgotten to ask us ), written in the article by B. Frolov “The Altamira Case” (magazine “Around the World”, 1972, No. 9).

Here are some more links on the topic:

And now - “Hummock, hummock!”, as Maria Sautuola shouted to dad when she saw amazing figures on the roof of the cave:

Bison

These beauties are most fully represented in Altamira. The following two images are the most famous and replicated:

The above bull, in an attacking pose, is most often given in textbooks, encyclopedias, and is invariably present on T-shirts, mugs, etc. But all these are drawings, and, of course, it is more interesting to look at the original source. So, in the bison depicted on the stamp, this one can be guessed:

The one on the T-shirt is more difficult. He is most similar:

"Economy, bold, confident strokes, combined with large spots of paint, convey the monolithic, powerful figure of the animal with a surprisingly accurate sense of its anatomy and proportions. The image is not only contour, but also three-dimensional: how tactile is the steep ridge of the bison and all the convexities of its massive body ! his furious roar and warlike cries of the crowd of hunters pursuing him. No, this is not an elementary drawing. His “realistic” skill could be envied by a modern animal artist" (Dmitrieva N.A. A Brief History of Art. M.: "Iskusstvo", 1985) .

There are, of course, other images that are no less impressive:

Horse

Deer (deer)

Hogs

Due to the fact that due to the massive influx of tourists, the microclimate inside the cave changed and mold appeared on the drawings, Altamira was completely closed to the public in 1977. It reopened in 1982 and closed completely in 2002.

Nevertheless, admirers of the caveman’s talents were not left to the mercy of fate: there are copies of Altamira paintings constructed with the latest technology in the museum complex next to the cave itself, as well as in Madrid, Munich and Japan. Unfortunately, it is not possible to take a virtual tour on the Internet, as it was, for example, absolutely stunningly realized with the Lascaux cave, the second most famous after Altamira. But about that

The beginning of human artistic creativity dates back to the most ancient stages of its history. In any case, its first “flourishing” is evidenced by monuments dating back to the Upper Paleolithic era - the ancient Stone Age, when people did not yet know either cattle breeding or agriculture and, in a harsh struggle with nature, obtained food by gathering, hunting and fishing. Only roughly processed tools made of wood, stone and bone served man in his hard work. 40-30 thousand years separate us from that time. It would seem difficult to expect from a person living in a stubborn and incessant struggle for existence, armed with the most primitive tools, suffering from hunger, cold and other hardships, that he would be capable of some more or less developed spiritual life.
Therefore, it is not so surprising that when drawings depicting various animals were discovered a hundred years ago in caves in France and Spain, many serious researchers doubted their authenticity. Indeed, there was something to be embarrassed about. Most of these drawings, painted with a few simple colors - white, yellow, brown, black - on the walls and vaults of caves, amazed with their extraordinary vitality and expression. It seemed incredible that a primitive “savage” would have such a keen eye and a steady hand. In the Altamira Cave in northern Spain, one of the most famous monuments of Paleolithic art, among many other images, an unknown artist painted a wounded bison. The mighty animal collapsed to the ground. A heavy body, still full of fierce strength, was captured with great accuracy. The buffalo bent his head and stuck his horns forward. The characteristic hunchbacked silhouette is captured at the moment of powerful efforts of the defeated giant. Bent legs make you feel how much energy is still in this body. But the animal’s rump is already falling on its side; a wide-open eye, clearly exaggerated in size, evokes a feeling of fading life. It is not surprising that the Paleolithic hunter knew the animal he was hunting perfectly. He developed keen observation skills from childhood. The emotional sensitivity with which the image of the bison in all its unique vital brightness was captured and captured should not be surprising.
More amazing is the skill of the master’s hand (this word does not seem to be an exaggeration here). Over the millennia that have passed since the creation of these frescoes, they, of course, have faded and crumbled. But, despite this, even today the viewer is amazed at how boldly the huge, half-meter figure of a bison is sketched, how two or three precisely placed lines and a few spots of ocher convey the powerful head, its humped back, and its hooves digging the ground. It is not without reason that the free sketchiness of such sketches of animals, conveyed in instantaneous movement, was sometimes compared to the works of the Impressionists. Skeptics had a lot to be confused about. Soon, however, they had to capitulate to the facts. More and more new discoveries forced us to discard any thought about fakes.
Now hundreds and hundreds of works dating back to this period are known: rock paintings, bone carvings, reliefs and figurines. Many have been found in our country. It is enough to recall the images of animals in the famous Kapova Cave in the Urals or human figurines from excavations on the Don (Kostenki), in Siberia (Malta) and other places. Many monuments of Paleolithic art have been found in other countries. Not all of them are distinguished by such vivid vitality as the drawings from Altamira, but for all that, the very high degree of observation and skill shown by these first “artists” in history is undeniable. Are they artists? Someone called the Altamira Cave the “Louvre of the Stone Age.” But can we say that the walls of the caves were painted for the pleasure of admiring the masterful images of animals? This can hardly be allowed to happen.
We do not know, in essence, what prompted primitive hunters to climb into the depths of dark caves and there, in the light of firebrands, paint dozens of drawings on the walls. And this continued, apparently, for many years, and perhaps generations: the drawings in Altamira and other caves are scattered without apparent order, often one on top of the other.
One might think that the “artist” was not at all concerned with the aesthetic effect of his works. Probably, these drawings played some role in the rites and rituals of a primitive family. Dark caves are not a suitable place for demonstrating artistic skill. Therefore, strictly speaking, we are not yet looking at works of art, but rather documents of primitive ritual.
We must not, however, forget that then, at the dawn of human history, people’s consciousness was syncretic in nature. In other words, it is still impossible to dissect separate forms of spiritual life in it: there is no science, no religion, no art, no poetry. But there is a single, undivided whole. But that’s not even the main thing. Although the artist of the Altamira bison did not think about the aesthetic effect, he already had a need (even if it was dictated by the needs of the ritual) to observe his surroundings and the ability to reproduce what he saw became stronger. Capturing a vivid impression of nature and fixing it in an image are already the most important elements of artistic mastery. Only long centuries of work could form the necessary prerequisites for this: a sense of form, rhythm, precision of the eye, steadiness of the hand. By creating primitive tools, Stone Age man accumulated the ability to explore the world artistically. “Only thanks to labor, thanks to adaptation to ever new operations, thanks to the inheritance of the special development of muscles, ligaments and, over longer periods of time, also bones, achieved in this way, as well as thanks to the ever-new application of these inherited improvements to new, increasingly complex operations - only thanks to all this has the human hand reached that high level of perfection at which it was able, as if by the power of magic, to bring to life the paintings of Raphael, the statues of Thorvaldsen, the music of Paganini "- wrote Engels. Paleolithic paintings indicate that this process began already then, at the dawn of history. Let's not exaggerate. The vivid impressionability of Stone Age art has its limits. His skill is the skill of fixing individual, single impressions. The Paleolithic did not yet know any complex compositions, any coherent “plots” or even simple combinations of different elements. Such a powerful means of artistic creativity as imagination, fantasy, fiction did not receive development here either.
This will become a thing of the future. But what the Paleolithic artists had already conquered—the sharpness of observation, the firmness and bold confidence of the hand—was an important and necessary beginning for the entire subsequent history of art.

The Cave of Altamira is a world-famous limestone cave in the Cantabrian Mountains, the study of which has changed the opinion of scientists and archaeologists about the life and art of the ancient people of the Paleolithic era. This discovery was made by a little girl, the daughter of amateur archaeologist Marcelino de Sautuola.

History of the find

The cave was discovered by chance in 1868 near the town of Santander by one of the local residents. When information reached the amateur archeologist Marcelino de Sautuola, he showed interest and came to examine it. On the very first day, he found the remains of animal bones and skeletons, as well as ancient human tools.

3 years later, after visiting an archeology exhibition in France, Sautuola decides to explore the cave in more detail, trying to open the upper layers of the soil. He began excavations in the fall of 1879, during which hatchets, parts of dishes, deer antlers and other interesting things were discovered.

During the next expedition, Marcelino brought his daughter to look at his works, who was delighted and tried to make her finds. Due to her small stature, the girl could make her way into those rooms where the ceiling was too low to allow an adult to pass. She made an important discovery in one of the side Altamira: rock paintings that covered the walls and ceiling, where large 2-meter bulls, horses and other animals were very realistically depicted.

Fake or revolution in history?

Marcelino de Sautuola began to study the vaults of the cave more carefully: in the next room he also found geometric images and drawings of animals. In the soil near the walls, the archaeologist was able to discover ocher of the same shade as in the pictures, which proved the local origin of the rock art. All this was traces of the life activity of primitive people.

He also collected evidence that the cave had been abandoned for many thousands of years, which means that all the objects inside belonged to ancient people who were previously considered incapable of communicating through speech, much less art.

Realizing that what he found is a world sensation and a discovery in the field of archeology and history, Sautuola decides to inform scientists about the discovery. To this end, in 1880 he sent a manuscript describing the cave and rock paintings to the editors of the famous magazine in France, “Materials on the Natural History of Man,” which specialized in such publications.

Scientists and archeology enthusiasts begin to come to the cave, but their reaction to Marcelino’s findings turned out to be sharply negative, he was even accused of falsifying data. The only person who believed in such a miracle was a geologist, a professor at Villanova University in Madrid. Together with Sautuola, he visited the cave: among the artifacts discovered in the upper layer of the earth, there was a stone shell in which a talented ancient artist diluted paints.

According to the editor of the magazine, E. Cartalhac, the scientific world was afraid of the new and unknown, which completely changed the idea of the development of mankind in ancient centuries. Therefore, Villanova’s speech at the congress of anthropologists with a report on the discovery was a failure. All major scientists declared the Altamira caves a falsification, accusing a Spanish amateur archaeologist of forgery.

Discovery of other caves

While historians were arguing about the reliability of the drawings and other finds of Sautuola, several more similar caves were discovered in Europe, in which the found objects, tools, sculptures and rock paintings dated back to the Upper Paleolithic era.

Thus, in 1895, the French archaeologist E. Riviere in the La Mute cave examined drawings of fossil animals and tools, the antiquity of which was confirmed by the impossibility of access to these layers by modern people. Elsewhere, Dalo's scientists also found images of mammoths and other animals from Paleolithic times. All of them were buried under a layer of earth, which testified to the antiquity of the finds.

Similar discoveries were made in Europe, Asia, the Urals, and Mongolia. However, all this happened years after the death of Sautuola and Villanova.

The person who was able to openly admit his mistakes and change the fate of the Altair cave was Cartagliac, who in 1902 called on the entire scientific world “not to make a fatal mistake” and begin researching ancient rock art.

Description of the cave

After recognizing the reliability of the finds in Altamira, scientists carried out excavations in it several times: in 1902-1904, in 1924-1925. and in 1981. Other caves were also examined; in total, modern scientists have counted about 150 similar finds in Western Europe alone.

The Altamira Cave in Spain (La cueva de Altamira) has been open for many years to all scientists and tourists interested in archaeology. It consists of several rooms, side passages and double corridors, the total length of which is 270 m, some with very low ceilings (about 2 m), others up to 6 m.

The main hall reaches 18 m in length. All drawings are polychrome and made with charcoal, ocher, hematite and other ancient natural paints using not only fingers, but also special devices. They are located on the walls and ceiling of all underground rooms.

Modern carbon dating data dates the rock art of the Altamira Cave to 15-8 thousand BC. e. and classify it as a Magdalenian culture (Paleolithic period). Since 1985, it has been recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

The art of primitive artists

In total, more than 150 images of fossil animals were discovered: bison, deer, wild boars, horses. All of them are performed in motion: while running, jumping, attacking or resting. Handprints of ancient people and schematic representations of their figurines were also found. Many of the drawings were created at different times, some are layered on top of each other.

Primitive artists used the relief of walls and ceilings to create 3-dimensional images. Moreover, the volumetric effect was achieved by a peculiar manner of drawing: dark contours of the figures, painted over inside with various shades of paint.

The largest in area is the ceiling painting in the Great Polychrome Hall, where on an area of 180 square meters. More than 20 animal figures were drawn. Many of the images are taken almost life-size.

The most famous drawing is the bison of the Altamira cave (Spain), the uniqueness of which also lies in the fact that this type of woolly bison is no longer found in nature; they became extinct many millennia ago.

Location of the cave and how to get there

The Altamira Cave is located in Cantabria (Spain), near Santilana del Mar, which is 30 km west of Santander, a town in the north of the country on the Atlantic Ocean. The entrance to the cave is located on a hill 158 m high at a distance of 5 km from Santillana del Maar, where the highway sign directs.

In the 1960-70s, this place was very popular among tourists, which caused an increase in temperature and humidity in the underground rooms, and mold appeared on the walls. Between 1977 and 1982, the cave was closed for restoration; further tourist visits were limited to 20 people per day.

In 2001, a museum complex was created near the cave, where copies of many images are exhibited. Now tourists can get acquainted with rock art without going underground.

Museum opening hours:

May - October - 9.30-20.00 (Tuesday-Saturday);
November - April - 9.30-18.00 (Tuesday-Saturday);
9.30-15.00 (Sundays and holidays);
Monday is a day off.

Free visits are open on 18.04, 18.05, 12.10 and 6.12, on Saturdays after 14.00, Sunday - all day.

According to scientists, the cave stretches 8-10 km deep into the earth and has an extensive system of passages, but all attempts by speleologists to get further were unsuccessful due to the narrow passages into which they could not squeeze.

The most colorful Great Polychrome Hall, which has a painted ceiling, is called the “Sistine Chapel of the Stone Age.” Other halls also have names: “Horse Tail”, “Hall of Tectiforms”, “The Pit”, “Hallway”, “Gallery”, “Hall of the Black Buffalo”.

In 2015, the Spanish mint issued a commemorative coin dedicated to the Altamira Cave. On the front side is its symbol - a bison, with 12 stars of the European Union in a ring around it.

In 2016, the feature film “Altamira” was shot, which tells the story of the discovery of the cave by Marcelino Sautuola and his struggle against scientists who declared the find a falsification.

The ancient rock art of the Altamira Cave is proof of the existence in the Paleolithic era of people who not only hunted and led a primitive lifestyle, but were also able to create such beautiful and talented works.

The Altamira Cave is located in the province of Cantabria in northern Spain. It is 30 km west of the seaside town of Santander. This natural formation is notable for its rock paintings, which experts attribute to the Late Paleolithic era. This is the so-called Madeleine culture. It was common in France, Switzerland, Belgium, Germany and Spain 8-15 thousand years BC. e.

This time is characterized by the end of the Ice Age, and the carriers of the culture lived by hunting mammoths, deer and other large animals. Bone processing was well developed, and flint incisors were made. People lived in caves and also made homes from animal bones and skins. They decorated their stone dwellings with wall paintings depicting animals and hunting scenes. Subsequently, the Madeleine culture was replaced by the Azilian culture.

Tourists in the Altamira cave

Discovery of the Altamira Cave

The entrance to the cave was first discovered in 1868 by a hunter named Modesto Cubillas. His dog got stuck in a crevice between the rocks while chasing prey. Freeing the animal, the man found the entrance. Modesto reported his discovery to paleontology enthusiast Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola. However, he visited this remarkable place only in 1875 and did not find anything unusual in this natural formation.

The next time the amateur paleontologist came to the cave only in the summer of 1879, together with his 8-year-old daughter Maria Faustina. The man set out to excavate the entrance to the cave in order to find in it the remains of bones and silicon, which he saw at an exhibition in Paris in 1878.

Drawings in the Altamira Cave depicting animals

The unique drawings were discovered by the girl, and not by her father. The little girl went downstairs to a side room and saw several paintings on the ceiling. At this time, the father was at the entrance and heard his daughter’s enthusiastic screams. He hurried to her, and his eyes saw the unique splendor of rock paintings depicting ancient animals.

The following year, 1880, Sautuola published a small pamphlet entitled "Short Notes on Some Prehistoric Objects in the Province of Santander" with graphic pictures. He transferred his work to the University of Madrid. However, experts took it with hostility, and considered the rock paintings in the cave to be falsifications.

The amateur paleontologist died in 1888. And in 1895, similar caves were discovered in France. After this, the significance of Santander's discovery was rethought. The Altamira Cave and its historical value were fully recognized in 1902. In 1985 it was included in the UNESCO World Heritage List.

Description of the Altamira cave

This unique formation is located in a limestone hill. The entrance to the cave is located at an altitude of 120 meters above the Sai River. About 13 thousand years ago it collapsed. This created a seal and allowed the rock art to be preserved. The length of the cave itself is 270 meters. It consists of a gallery and halls. The largest or main hall is 18 meters long, 9 meters wide and 2.5 to 5.5 meters high. There are hand-made drawings on the walls and ceiling. In prehistoric times, light entered this room from an opening at the top. Humidity is 94-97%, temperature is 13.5-14.5 degrees Celsius.

Altamira Museum Complex from a bird's eye view

In other rooms and corridors, the images have less artistic significance. They were always out of reach of the sun's rays and were performed under artificial lighting. Fire was used for these purposes, and the fuel for it was mainly bone marrow. Proof of this is the large number of broken bones found under the drawings.

Rock paintings were painted with charcoal, hematite, ocher and other natural paints. Boars, bison, wild horses, and other animals are depicted, and there are also prints of human palms. The age of the drawings made with charcoal is 14 thousand years. And the drawings made using humic fractions have an approximate age of 14.5 thousand years.

Restoration work in the cave

Tourism

In the 60-70s of the 20th century, the Altamira cave was extremely popular among tourists. More than 1.5 thousand people visited it per day. As a result of such excitement, the drawings became covered with mold. In 1977, this historical site was closed for restoration. It was reopened only in 1982, but with a limited visit of no more than one tourist group per day and 8.5 thousand visitors per year. People signed up and waited for years.

In 2002, the cave was closed again due to mold. They opened on February 26, 2014, but were limited to 5 visitors per day and 37 minutes per day for viewing. However, a museum complex with copies of cave images was located nearby in 2001. So anyone can get acquainted with the unique artistic creations of antiquity without visiting the cave itself. Copies of the drawings are also available in the National Archaeological Museum in Madrid, in museums in Germany and Japan.

Altamira Cave on the map of Spain
(red circle above)

(Prideaux T. "Cro-Magnon Man" - Moscow: Mir, 1979)

As we begin to tell the story of the great age of prehistoric art, we must pay tribute to the insatiable curiosity of dogs and children. These carefree researchers sometimes make amazing discoveries - just remember how drawings were found in the Spanish cave of Altamira. They were discovered thanks to a happy accident - and the world received convincing evidence of the amazing artistic talent of the Cro-Magnons.

The story begins in 1868, when twenty-five kilometers from the port of Santander on the Atlantic coast of Spain, a hunting dog, chasing a fox along a slope, fell into a hole between boulders. To help the dog out of trouble, the hunter rolled away several stones and saw that they hid the entrance to an ancient cave.

This innocuous incident marked the beginning of a chain of significant events. The cave was located on the land of the Spanish nobleman and amateur archaeologist Don Marcelino de Sautuola, not far from his summer villa, but seven years passed before anyone bothered to inform the owner about it - there were more than enough caves in this area. When Sautuola finally explored the front of the cave, he found bones of extinct animals - bison, giant deer and wild horses, but none of them were particularly rare. Only in 1878, when at the Paris World Exhibition he saw display cases with Ice Age tools and bone carvings, did it occur to him that the same treasures might be hidden in his own estate. And Don Marcelino very wisely asked the French archaeologist Edouard Piette to acquaint him in detail with the stages of development of the Ice Age culture, with its stone tools and images of animals.

Marcelino Sanz de Sautuola and his daughter Maria

Then, knowing what he should look for, Don Marcelino hastily returned to Spain, cleared the entrance to the cave again and began to excavate its floor. Compared* to other prehistoric caves, Altamira is not particularly large - its total length is just over a quarter of a kilometer. Behind the narrow entrance it expands into a zigzag enfilade of three galleries with several side branches and ends in a very narrow winding corridor just under 50 meters in length. Bent over, Don Marcelino dug up a considerable number of stone tools near the entrance. But it turned out that during these preliminary studies his head was turned in the wrong direction.

And here a child appears in history who corrected this mistake. One day in 1879, Maria, Sautuola’s twelve-year-old daughter, went with her father to excavations and, about 25 meters from the entrance, wandered into a narrow branch, the height of which never exceeded one and a half meters. Therefore, her father, digging up the floor there in search of tools, was forced to work on all fours, but Maria’s height allowed her to look around. And in the dim light of the lantern she saw a herd of red animals running along the ceiling. The girl rushed to her father to report her discovery.

Don Marcelino, bending over, entered the side branch, looked up at the ceiling and saw about twenty-five painted animals, mainly bison. Excitement prevented him from counting them carefully, otherwise he would have noticed that there were also two horses, a wolf, three female deer and three wild boars. Some were drawn life-size or even larger, and in the flickering light of the lanterns they seemed to move. Brown, red, yellow, black, they absorbed the outlines of the rock: the artist deliberately positioned them to take advantage of the uneven surface of the Altamira ceiling. For example, a back leg could be drawn onto a bulge, creating a surprisingly realistic sense of volume.

Don Marcelino was shocked. Yes, in one of the French caves, drawings of animals scratched into the rock had already been found, but he was the first of all the researchers to see Stone Age paintings. And his feelings, while he squinted, peered at the amazing ceiling, can be compared with the feeling that Galileo experienced when he first brought his invention to his eyes - a spyglass - and, looking into the previously inaccessible limits of the heavens, saw the moons of Jupiter. Outwardly, these two discoveries are not at all similar to each other: one overcame the immensity of space, the other - the immensity of time. But in both cases, man partially overcame this immensity and immeasurably expanded his knowledge.

Don Marcelino hurried to Madrid to consult with his friend paleontologist Juan Vilanova y Piera, a professor at the University of Madrid, who had already helped the distinguished amateur more than once. Vilanova became extremely interested in the unexpected find and immediately went to the Sautuola estate. He found no evidence that anyone had been in the cave since the last Ice Age - he could only conclude that the drawings could not have been made later. Don Marcelino printed a brochure describing his discovery. Maria's photograph appeared in the newspaper. Among the curious who hurried to inspect the cave was the Spanish King Alfonso XII, who bowed his august head to enter the gallery of bison. (Since then, the floor there has been deepened and modern tourists can admire the animals without craning their necks.)

The cave is located under an old farm, aptly named Altamira (watchtower), and overlooks a gentle slope with a meadow in front of it. Everything around breathes a cozy serenity. However, in the south the majestic Cantabrian Mountains crash into the sky, and closer to the west rise the Picos de Europa, whose peaks, almost always covered with snow, reach a height of two and a half kilometers. It is unknown whether Altamira ever served as a sanctuary, but its beautiful location suggests such a possibility.

The discovery of Altamira initially did not make the desired impression on academic circles. Scientists who agreed to recognize the antiquity of man were not yet ready to see him as an artist. When in 1880 Vilanova publicly acknowledged the colossal importance of Don Marcelino's discovery at a congress of specialists in Lisbon, his opinion was contemptuously rejected by pundits from France, Germany, Sweden, Norway and England. Everyone unanimously believed that these drawings could not be more than 20 years old. A certain Spanish artist majestically declared that in them "there is nothing of the spirit of the art of the Stone Age, of archaic art, Assyrian or Phoenician. They are just the daubs of a mediocre follower of the modern school of painting." But the most devastating attack was from a French expert, who pointed out that an artist had been living on Don Marcelino’s estate for several years, hinting at Sautuola’s protégé, who made copies of prehistoric originals. The professor made it clear that this was a hoaxer who secretly snuck into the ancient cave with lanterns and paints to paint the walls with his fakes. The assembled bosses actually seized upon this absurdity with gloating. Don Marcelino gave up trying to prove the authenticity of Ice Age art and locked the entrance to the cave. In 1888 he died.

The insults heaped upon Don Marcelino were unforgivable, but there was some reason for the skepticism of his critics. It seemed incredible to them that the colors applied to the walls during the Ice Age could remain so bright and that the easily crumbling limestone underneath remained intact. Moreover, the paintings were executed with great technical skill and had their own style, which ran counter to the 19th century ideas about primitive people as primitive savages. Scientists have somehow failed to notice the undeniable similarity in both theme and spirit between Altamira's paintings and the animal figurines scratched into bones, which were already recognized as a legacy of the Ice Age. A study of these figurines, written by the French paleontologist Edouard Larte and the English archaeologist Henry Christie, has just been published, and therefore it is difficult to understand how knowledgeable experts could reject an enlarged version of almost the same figures. And twenty years passed before the most celebrated of all the caves painted by prehistoric artists was rediscovered and Don Marcelino's belief in the great value of his find was fully justified.

When the antiquity of cave painting was finally recognized, the Cro-Magnon man firmly gained the title of the first artist in human history. His scratched-and-painted drawings did not serve purely utilitarian purposes, only accidentally being pleasing to the eye. They were intended to be looked at - even if only by their creators - and to satisfy some internal need. However, Cro-Magnon man did not create highly developed art out of nothing. The origins of his artistic daring were undoubtedly more ancient than himself.

For at least a million years, ancient people left no evidence of the existence of art or aesthetic sense. However, a sparkling quartz crystal found in the Chinese Zhoukoudian cave suggests that even Homo erectus 500 thousand years ago could have kept such objects for their beauty, to which he attributed beneficial properties, and it is likely that other ancient people decorated themselves with feathers, antlers and furs , and then they made rhythmic movements and sang, guided by a complex system of motivations, among which was the satisfaction of aesthetic needs. From Neanderthal times, evidence has come down to us that tools were deliberately processed with eye-pleasing symmetry. Therefore, it is logical to assume that Cro-Magnon man, when he began to create a visible chronicle of his time, already had certain fundamentals of artistic expression and an intuitive understanding of its rules and limits.

Cro-Magnon art falls into two main categories. The first is usually denoted by the French term "art mobilier" - "movable" art, and the second - "art parietal", art "immovable", for example, drawings on the walls of a cave.

The oldest monuments of human artistic achievement belong to the first category - small objects carved from bone, horns and tusks or sculpted from clay, which date back at least 30 thousand years and were among the first of man's own possessions, highly valued and carefully preserved. Over countless millennia, human fingers have learned how to squeeze, how to grasp a stone or piece of bone, and how to manipulate a cutting implement. And naturally, man little by little began to make small decorative objects. He created them in abundance - most likely in the winter, when he went hunting less often and had sufficient leisure. Archaeologists have found such objects or their fragments everywhere from France to Siberia, and they are united not only by their small size, but also by the thoroughness of their processing. Some are even polished and carved. They came to us because they were lost or forgotten in caves, under rock overhangs or in open Cro-Magnon sites and were preserved under growing layers of earth. In Czechoslovakia and the Soviet Union, some were hidden in pits near the fireplace, suggesting that their owners attached some special meaning to them.

These small things allow us to get to know the Cro-Magnon man better, because they were part of his everyday life - its decoration. They were lovingly stroked by human hands, just like ours - they were used, hidden, perhaps stolen, exchanged for others, offered as a sign of friendship or for propitiation. The flashy cave paintings have pushed them into the shadows, but this humbler, more human art is no less precious in its own way. Scratched and carved images of animals - antelopes, bison, horses, lions, bears - are full of life, as if prehistoric man reveled in his new talent: the expressive variety of these images and patterns both follows nature and transforms it.

The prehistoric artist never framed his work or placed it on a pedestal. He incorporated it into the surrounding natural material. However, if he did not find rock formations suitable for his design, then he himself created the necessary forms, as was the case, for example, with two bison decorating a cave in Le Tuc d'Odubert in the Ariège department (foothills of the Pyrenees). Apparently, he carved these two bison from pieces of dry clay - a very unusual technique, which means adding new material to a natural surface, but he stuck his animals to the flat ledge with such verisimilitude that they seem to be part of it.

The same majestic fusion of art and nature were the rock paintings of Altamira, from which the scientific world at first turned away with contempt. Over time, of course, their authenticity was established, but it was a long process, determined by a number of subsequent discoveries.

Decisive was the discovery in 1895 in France (again thanks to the curiosity of a child) of the La Mout cave with a bison on the ceiling. This time, experts were no longer so skeptical: in this change, a significant role was played by the same Edouard Piette, who advised Don Marcelino de Sautuola during the Paris Exhibition of 1878, and later defended his discovery. Piette pointed out the fundamental similarities between the drawings of La Mute and Altamira, and after rock art was discovered in the French caves of Font-de-Gaume and Combarel, French scientists could no longer doubt that in the area covering southwestern France and north -west of Spain, there was largely a single cave art.

Altamira received long-awaited recognition. This officially happened in 1902, when Emil Kartelak, one of its most persistent opponents, publicly admitted his mistake in the now famous article “The Repentance of a Skeptic.” A year later, Cartelac invited the young priest Henri Breuil, who had already gained fame for his research on Cro-Magnon finds, to travel with him to Altamira. They carefully examined the cave, and Breuil began to paint copies of the paintings, which introduced Cro-Magnon art to the general public.

Emile Cartailhaс

Scientists who began to zealously explore the Altamira Cave, evaluate its treasures and measure it, reported that the length of the main art gallery, as it is now called, is only 18 meters, and the width does not exceed 8-9 meters. The ceiling is so low that it is easy to understand why prehistoric artists preferred to paint on it rather than on the walls. True, it is very uneven, but perhaps it was precisely this surface that attracted artists: by including protrusions in images of animals, they achieved the impression of volume.

With a characteristic lack of unanimity, experts count from 25 to 100 animals at Altamira, depending on how they take into account the remains of older drawings on top of which new ones were made. The vast majority of animals are depicted in life size.

The art gallery contains works dating from different periods. There is no single dating. According to the German archaeologist Johannes Maringer, the Aurignacian period (approximately 34-21 thousand years ago) is represented by small-sized, simple contour drawings. Then, for two thousand years, artists painted over the bodies of animals with red or black paint. When the full flowering of late Magdalenian art came (19-12 thousand years ago), the basis was drawing and shading inside the figure. Anatomical features were highlighted with sharp strokes. Skilful gradations of color gave the muscles a bulging appearance.

All the paints used by prehistoric artists were made from natural pigments - that is, they were mineral and therefore did not fade. The most common was ocher, a clay mixed with iron minerals that provides a variety of shades from pure red and yellow to light brown and dark brown. Some black paints were made from charcoal, but the most durable ones were based on manganese oxide, a fairly common mineral. The dyes were turned into powder and then mixed with one or another binding substance - blood, animal fat, urine, fish glue, egg white or plant sap.

Based on the remains of the devices used by the artists found in the caves, one can even imagine how all this happened. It is likely that not one artist worked, but two or three - an experienced master and his assistants or students, who looked after the lamps, ground pigments and performed all other auxiliary work.

The artists work under artificial light, which is provided by small lamps - stone bowls filled with fat. They are placed throughout the cave on stones and ledges, like lamps (in other eras and in other places, lamps were made from sea shells picked up on the shore or from skull caps). The wicks are strands of hair or moss.

Dancing lights cast whimsical shadows on the walls and ceiling, the acrid smoke of burning fat mixes with the smells of binding substances mixed with pigments. The artist consults a preliminary sketch that he has scratched on a flat stone. (Several of these stones were found - on them in miniature, almost line by line, are depicted the same animals that decorate the walls of some caves.) Preparing to begin work, just in case, he presses his palm to the arch where he is going to draw - after all, paint can be used Apply only to completely dry surfaces. He begins by either drawing the outline of the animal with black paint or scratching it out with a sharp tool. He applies the paint with a brush made from animal hair, or perhaps uses a greased stick or a “pencil” made from hardened paste.

When the outline is ready, the artist begins to color it, highlighting some details in black - eyes, horns, muscles and hooves. He mixes the paints in separate shells (during excavations in caves, shells with stains of ocher of different shades were found), and applies them to the drawing using various devices - carefully smears them with a brush, after which he smooths them out with his finger or a soft swab made of moss, lichen, or maybe wool until it achieves an almost imperceptible transition from one shade to another. Or maybe he sprinkles the paint like powder, or blows it through a hollow bird bone, so that it settles on the stone like mist.

If we remember how limited the palette of the prehistoric artist was - yellow, red, brown and black - one can only be amazed at the variety and fidelity of shades. When, having completed his work, the artist leaves the cave, the others look at him with respect and fear. Whether they are allowed to look at his creation or not, they know that he has performed a magical act for the benefit of the whole group, and in their eyes he has already acquired something of the mystery and magical power of the shaman or priest.

After Altamira was officially certified, it remained the richest museum of prehistoric art for almost 40 years. Its ceiling is perhaps the most famous among all the ceiling lamps in the world, not counting Michelangelo’s Vatican masterpieces. The Altamira Gallery, in fact, was even called the Sistine Chapel of the Stone Age. But since 1940, Altamira has shared this honor with the remarkable Lascaux cave in the Vésère valley. The circumstances of its discovery are very reminiscent of the story of the discovery of Altamira - again a dog chasing some kind of animal, and teenagers. This time the dog fell into a hole at the roots of a spruce tree, torn up by the storm. And again, at the sound of the squeal of the trapped dog, his owner, one of the four boys walking nearby, came running, widened the hole and slid to the floor of the cave, which was at a depth of seven and a half meters. The friends followed him, began to light matches and saw horses, deer and bulls on the walls around them. The boys kept their amazing discovery a secret for four days, and then they could not stand it and told their teacher about the cave. And four days later, the famous Abbot Breuil, who, by a happy coincidence, then lived only forty kilometers from the cave, took charge of her. The discovery was made during the year of the occupation of France during the Second World War, and it was then impossible to install heavy steel doors and provide air conditioning to preserve the system of galleries and cave walls. But in 1948 this was done, and scientists and tourists gained access to Lascaux, who visited the cave in the thousands every day.

For some reason unique to Lascaux, such an invasion of people turned out to be harmful: spots of multiplying algae began to spread across the drawings. The cave was closed to visitors, and scientists began to find ways to rid it of this dangerous enemy, the appearance of which was apparently associated with the air exhaled by people or some other secretions of the human body. That is why now no more than 4-5 people per day, usually specialists, are allowed into the cave with special permission.

It is natural to draw comparisons between Lascaux and Altamira. Both caves were used by prehistoric people during approximately the same period - 34-12 thousand years ago. But, according to some experts, the best drawings of Altamira date back to the end of this period, while the drawings at Lascaux were created several thousand years earlier, at the time of its greatest flowering. The general impression of Altamira is magical grandeur and peace. The bison, then the rulers of the animal kingdom, hunched their powerful maned shoulders and pushed everyone else into the background. They, as Breuil described them, “sometimes just stand, resting, sometimes lie or stretch, sometimes leisurely wander somewhere, sometimes gallop.” But there are few racing among them. The nobility that the artists endowed on these giants shows how people treated them. The Cro-Magnons may have had a reverent respect for them, having not yet learned to look at the animal world with the indifference or arrogant condescension that people developed many thousands of years later.

At least three Altamiran bison are called lying - their legs are tucked under the body, and their heads are lowered low. Some experts are of the opinion that these bison are dying and are no longer able to stand on their feet. But most believe that they are sleeping or are about to give birth to a calf. Their postures were apparently determined by the rock protrusions, which suggested such a crouched position. But whatever the explanation - and different explanations may be true in different cases - these giants perfectly symbolize hidden energy, ready to break free.

But despite the overall calm grandeur, the Altamira gallery has its exceptions. For example, the “roaring bison” makes you forget about serenity - its mouth is open, its head is pushed forward, its eyes are bulging wildly, its mane bristles like barbed wire, and its back is arched. This may be the world's first depiction of primordial rage. In complete contrast to him is a peaceful bison with his head raised, as if preparing to pick a leaf from a branch. Altamira boasts two boars - this is the only cave where, without any doubt, boars are depicted. A female red deer stands somewhat to the side, as if protecting her dignity; this is the largest image of an animal in Spanish caves (over two meters long). And the gentle ghostly head of a bison, painted in yellow paint perhaps 25 thousand years ago, is almost invisible. This is one of the oldest drawings in the cave, almost erased, but still not losing its expressiveness.

Unlike Altamira, the animals in Lascaux are much calmer and much more diverse. If the animals of Altamira are almost all serene and majestic, then in Lascaux they often run quickly. The famous "falling horse" is depicted upside down and with its head between its hooves. While the Altamira artists had full control of color and movement, the Lascaux artists applied paint casually and used wavy lines that recall the Baroque style in the boldness of their strokes and curls. If Altamira’s painting gives the impression of being classical and orthodox, then in Lascaux it is unfettered and, to a modern eye, seems exotic.

The Lascaux cave is roughly horseshoe-shaped and is about 100 meters long from end to end. Visitors walk through massive metal barriers and step (with their shoes on, of course) into a disinfectant liquid that kills any algae that might be clinging to the soles. After this, they are allowed into a semicircular art gallery, where they immediately see a fantastic beast on the left wall, as if guarding the entrance. It is extremely consistent with the spirit of Lascaux. It is called a unicorn, but it is more like a “bicorn”, since two horns protrude forward from its forehead. It appears to have been drawn over an earlier drawing, perhaps a red outline of a small horse. The length of this strange creature is about 165 centimeters, and, according to some, it has the body of a rhinoceros and the head of an orongo antelope. But it could also be a person in a mask, dressed like that before performing some ritual. The circles drawn on its side, which do not exist in nature on any animal, suggest a fancy dress. The square face and hump increase the feeling of unreality, and besides, it is pregnant.

Of particular interest in the semicircular gallery are four giant white bulls, each about 4 meters long, outlined with a thick black stripe. The Lascaux artists did not use white paint, but the impression of whiteness arises due to the fact that the grayish stone inside the black stripes is not painted over. This skillfully created effect of whiteness gives the bulls a mysterious divinity, similar to that endowed with the Egyptian god Apis, who was worshiped in the form of a white bull. As a matter of fact, these four bulls could well be deities, looking benignly at the world of smaller animals - running horses, deer with fantastic antlers, small cows. In the semicircular gallery, as in the rest of the cave, the difference in the scale of the drawings is striking. Between the legs of huge bulls there will be a real “heap of small things” of smaller animals - a whimsical thicket of legs and branched horns. It is an interplay of time and angles, a carnival of ghostly creatures from the past, superimposed images, mysterious icons and mysterious rows of black spots.

In a narrow straight gallery, about 20 meters long, which begins behind the semicircular one, the visitor seems to find himself in the path of rapidly running animals, whose hooves thunder right above his head. Two groups compete on the walls. On the left wall there are four cows and three small, incompletely painted horses. The composition on the right wall, dominated by 13 horses, is much more interesting. Five horses, similar to Shetland ponies, bravely trot forward, although a huge cow soars above them. On the same wall are two famous “Chinese” horses, so named because of the thin legs and thick bellies that Chinese artists of the classical period equipped horses with.

The treasures of Lascaux are much more varied than those of Altamira, but the figures on the walls and ceilings of these caves equally pose many mysteries for scientists. It depicts mainly animals that served as prey for Cro-Magnon hunters - bison, horses, deer. In general, they are drawn with enormous life-like authenticity, which cannot be said about images of humans. There are very few of the latter, and these are either conventional combinations of sticks, or chimeras like a bird-headed man.

The artists of the golden age of prehistoric art expressed themselves mainly in small sculpture and drawings on bone, rather than in wall painting, and it was only at the end of the Ice Age, just before the advent of agriculture, that many images of people appeared on the walls of caves.

Such strangeness, naturally, gave rise to many different interpretations - in the drawings they saw, for example, magic spells, symbolic images of rituals and mystical signs indicating the supposed nature of the Universe. But the main significance of Cro-Magnon art - both wall art and the rest - is clear and indisputable. The emergence of fine art, not inferior to anything created by people in subsequent eras, marked the appearance of a completely new element in human life. Its connection with the purely practical struggle for survival, which for so long formed the basis and meaning of human existence, was only indirect. Since then, the highest aspirations of humanity have focused not on physical, but on intellectual and spiritual needs.

Drawings made with ocher, charcoal, hematite and other natural paints cover the walls and ceilings of almost all rooms.

The effect of a three-dimensional image gives amazing realism to the drawings - ancient artists used not only the natural relief of the cave walls, but also a unique style of drawing: leaving the contours dark, they painted over the animal figures with colored paints of different tonal intensities.

The drawings in the mysterious cave depict deer, wild boars, horses and bison - lazily resting and running, attacking and frozen in a jump... Among them there are very detailed and large images - such as, for example, an image of a red deer more than 2 m long. The most famous painting of the ceiling in one of the cave halls: on an area of almost 100 sq. m depicts more than 20 animal figures.

The wall paintings of the Altamira Cave were created at different times. This is evidenced by the layering of images one on top of the other, and by carbon analysis. The earliest drawings date back to the Paleolithic era. This means that they are at least 18,000 years old.

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