Very picturesque is the account of the discovery of this wonderful ceiling, made not by the Spanish archæologist Sautuola himself, but by his little daughter, who, while he was searching for flints on the floor of the cavern, was the first to perceive the paintings on the ceiling and to insist upon his raising his lamp aloft. This was in 1879, long before the discovery of parietal art in France. The ceiling is broad and low, within easy reach of the hand, and the oval bosses of limestone (Fig. 227), from 4 to 5 feet in length and from 3 to 4 in width, led to the development here of one of the most striking characteristics of all Palæolithic art, namely, the artist's adaptation of the subject to his medium and to the character of the surface upon which he was working. It seems to show a high order of creative genius that each of these projecting bosses was chosen for the representation of a bison lying down, with the limbs drawn up in different positions beneath the body (Fig. 228) and very carefully designed, and with the tail or the horns alone projecting beyond the convex surface to the surrounding plane surface. This is the only instance known where the bison are represented as lying down, in most lifelike attitudes, showing the soles of the hoof, observed with the greatest care and represented by a few strong and significant lines. Thus while the Altamira coloring inclines to conventionality, the pose of these animals indicates the greatest freedom of style and mastery of perspective anywhere observed. In this wonderful group there is also a bison bellowing, with his back arched and his limbs drawn under him as if to expel the air. One striking feature in all these paintings is the vivid representation of the eye, which in every case is given a fierce and defiant character, so distinctive of the bison bull when enraged. We also observe a wild boar in a running attitude and several spirited representations of the horse and of the female deer. The cavern of Altamira, besides this chef-d'œuvre, contains work of a very advanced character, as indicated in the imposing engraving of the royal stag (Fig. 229), which is altogether the finest representation of this animal which has thus far been discovered in any cavern.
Fig. 229. The royal stag (Cervus elaphus) engraved on the ceiling of the cavern of Altamira. About twenty-six inches in length. After Breuil. One-eighth actual size.
Altamira, like Font-de-Gaume, presents many phases of the development of art in Magdalenian times. There is a Solutrean layer in the foyer of this great cavern, but Breuil is not inclined to attribute any of the art to this period. The first entrance of Altamira by the Crô-Magnon artists is dated by the discovery of engravings on bone of the female red deer, which are identical with those on the walls and which belong to very ancient Magdalenian times, the period at which the caverns of Castillo and La Pasiega were also entered.[(28)]
Sculpture
Animal sculpture in the round, which is indicated by the few statuettes found with the burial at Brünn, Moravia, and by the ivory mammoth statuette found at Předmost, continued into early Magdalenian times and certainly constitutes one of the most distinctive features of the art of that period, because in the later Magdalenian it took a different trend in the direction of decorative sculpture. Only two fine examples of early Magdalenian animal sculpture have been found, but these are of such a remarkable character as to indicate that modelling in the round was widely pursued at this time. These are the bisons discovered in 1912 in the cavern of Tuc d'Audoubert near Montesquieu, in the Pyrenees, and the fine bas-reliefs of horses at the shelter of Cap-Blanc, on the Beune, in Dordogne.
Fig. 230. Statuette of a mammoth in reindeer horn from the Abri de Plantade at Bruniquel. After Piette. "A statuette presenting the general form of the mammoth with some fantastic features. It formed part of a pendant of which the shank, terminating with a perforation, has been broken. The tusks were laid against this shank and strengthened it. The incisions bordered by notches suggest the nostrils of some imaginary monster. The trunk seems to grow out of the neck, not the head. The tail having been broken off in Palæolithic times, the owner made a hole in the back and inserted one there. The material was too thin to admit of representing the proper thickness of the animal. It was made to be viewed from the side."
Fig. 231. Entrance to the cavern of Tuc d'Audoubert, near Montesquieu-Avantès in the Pyrenees. This is one of the rare instances in which the stream that formed the cavern is still flowing from the entrance. Photograph by N. C. Nelson.