The creative spirit manifested itself along many different lines. In the fashioning of bone in early Aurignacian times there begins a new industry capable of great possibilities; out of combinations of lines there develop geometric figures; in animal figures there is an attempt at simple symmetric relations, but a full, free composition is not attained. With further experience in working with bone and ivory, we find in the middle Aurignacian the first plastic representations of the human figure in the round.
Fig. 159. Statuette in limestone from the grotto of Willendorf, Lower Austria, attributed to the late Aurignacian. This female figurine, possibly an idol and generally known as the 'Venus of Willendorf,' is about four and one-half inches in height. After Szombathi.
The Crô-Magnon artist undertook this plastic work, choosing chiefly for his subject the female figure. These small plastic models were probably designed as idols; the figures are often misshapen; in the face the eyes frequently are not indicated at all; in some cases the ear is indicated; they recall the style of the modern cubists. More care is given to the sculpture of the form of the body than of the face. The ivory statue known as the Venus of Brassempouy lies at the base of the middle Aurignacian; of the same epoch are the female statuettes of Sireuil, and the torso from Pair-non-Pair, whereas the soapstone figurine of Mentone and the ivory statuettes of Trou Magrite, Belgium, belong to the late Aurignacian. The spread of these idols, which are altogether characteristic of the earlier period of the Upper Palæolithic, is traced eastward to Willendorf, Austria, and to Brünn, Moravia.
Breuil's great contention is a certain similarity to north African art, which would seem to agree with his theory that the Crô-Magnon people followed the southern shores of the Mediterranean, bringing with them the Aurignacian industry and the glyptic art of the female statuettes similar to those of baked clay which are found along the valley of the Nile. These figurines have in common the great development of all the parts connected with maternity, and in some cases a coiffure or head-dress very much like that found in the most primitive Egyptian work. The extreme corpulence of all the figurines has been compared with the 'steatopygy,' or development of what are politely known as the 'posterior curves,' of the female in many African races. But only one of these Aurignacian figurines is truly 'steatopygous'; the others are simply corpulent, a condition due to eating large quantities of fat and marrow, and probably to a very sedentary life. It is noteworthy that none of the male figures in drawing and sculpture is corpulent. While the art of the statuettes appears to come to a close in late Aurignacian times, it may extend into the Solutrean at Brünn, Moravia, and at Trou Magrite, Belgium. With due regard for analogies, it would rather appear probable that this archaic sculpture was autochthonous.
Fig. 160. Female figurine in soapstone, discovered at the Grottes de Grimaldi, near Mentone, and attributed to the late Aurignacian. After Obermaier. This seems to be a prototype of modern cubist art.
The art of engraving and drawing was almost certainly autochthonous, because we trace it from its most rudimentary beginnings. This northern art developed from the beginning of Upper Palæolithic times over the whole of southwestern France and in the northwest of Spain, being contemporaneous with the descent of the alpine fauna from the Pyrenees and the Alps and the presence all over western Europe of the tundra fauna. It was, by preference, an animal art, begun by the Aurignacians but largely suspended in Solutrean times.
Fig. 161. Superposed engravings of various mammals on a slab of slate found in the Grotte du Trilobite, Yonne, France. In detail are seen the profiles of two woolly rhinoceroses superposed on the rump of a mammoth with tail upturned. After Breuil.