CAVE ART ACCURACY OF DETAIL IN ANIMAL DEPICTIONS IS BETTER THAN IN HISTORIC ART:

Aurochs, Lascaux Cave, France.

Internet photo, Public domain.

I have recently written about the question of identifying varieties of deer in cave paintings from their antler shapes, and also about cave artists learning to portray perspective in aurochs horns over time. Joseph Stromberg wrote a piece about cave pictures of animals in December 2012 with the title " Cavemen Were Much Better At Illustrating Animals Than Artists Today." His article was a synopsis of a much longer study by Horvath et. al. from Plosone, "Cavemen Were Better at Depicting Quadruped Walking than Modern Artists: Erroneous Walking Illustrations in the Fine Arts from Prehistory to Today," which focused on the portrayal of the gaits of the animals pictured on cave walls.

Diagram of gait of Lascaux aurochs,

From Horvath et. al. 
(I have no idea why they reversed it)

"The leg attitudes of walking quadrupeds, especially horses, are also frequently erroneously illustrated in the works of fine arts. These artistic representations of walking quadrupeds have not been systematically studied from a biomechanical point of view. To fill this gap, we have collected 1000 different fine art quadruped walking illustrations from the Internet and other sources. We analysed them to decide whether they are correct or not in respect to the relative limb positions with the assumption that the other aspects of statues, paintings, drawings and reliefs used to determine animal gait are depicted correctly. As a result we have determined the rate r of erroneous artistic quadruped walking depictions. We obtained the error rates of artistic quadruped walking illustrations for the prehistoric period, for the pre-Muybridge time (after prehistory but prior to 1887) and for the post-Muybridge period (after 1887). We have also calculated the error rate for three-dimensional (cavalry statues) and two-dimensional (paintings, graphic art, reliefs) artistic quadruped walking depictions." (Horvath et. al. 2012)

Photo study of horse gaits,

Edward Muybridge, public domain.

In this study the works of Paleolithic cave artists (particularly in Lascaux cave in France) were compared to animal portrayals by artists from the Renaissance until today. "The researchers evaluated the prehistoric artists on the basis of the landmark 1880s finding by British photographer Eadweard Maybridge that horses (and, it was later discovered, most four-legged animals) move their legs in a particular sequence as they walk. The "foot-fall formula," as it's called goes LH-LF-RH-RF, where H means 'hind,' F means 'fore,' and L and R mean 'left' and 'right,' respectively. At the time of Muybridge, this was thought to be an entirely novel discovery." (Stromberg 2012)

Horse drawings, Lascaux Cave, France.

Internet photos, Public domain.

But, as the researchers discovered, the Paleolithic artists apparently had learned it too. "Of the 39 ancient cave paintings depicting the motion of four-legged animals that were considered in the study, 21 nailed the sequence correctly, a success rate of 53.8%. Due to the number of combinations of how a four-legged animal's gait can be depicted, the researchers state that mere chance would lead to a 26.7% rate of getting it right. Cavemen artists knew what they were doing." (Stromberg 2012)

Cavallo della Sforza, designed by

Leonardo da Vinci. Statue by

Nina Akamu, 1999,

Internet photo, Public domain.

"When the researchers looked at 272 paintings and statues of four-legged animals made during modern times but before Muybridge's finding in the 1880s, such as a famous horse sketch by Leonardo da Vinci, it turned out that these more recent artists were much worse: They only got the sequence right 16.5% of the time. Remarkably, even the 686 paintings and statues studied that were made more recently than 1887, after scientists knew for sure how four-legged animals walked, still got it right just 42.1% of the time." (Stromberg 2012)

Design for Cavallo della Sforza,

Leonardo da Vinci, 1482.

Internet photo, Public domain.

Drawings of prancing horses,

Leonardo da Vinci, 1482.

Internet photo, Public domain.

Leonardo left many drawings of horses and designs for equestrian statues in his notebooks and if they were shown as walking they illustrated the horse's gait incorrectly. Since the cave paintings as well as Leonardo's sketches do not generally include a ground line, the researchers had to estimate that to complete their analysis, but, if more than one foot of the animal is raised there is no way to draw a ground line that contacts three feet. Cave artists - 53.8% to Post-Muybridge modern artists - 42.1%, and we call them "Primitive" artists.

Now it is important to again clarify that this only applies to walking gaits by these large quadrupeds. Other gaits; trot, gallop, run, leaping, etc., can have different characteristics including more than one foot off the ground at one time.

NOTE:  On August 25, 2019, I published "On Endless Motion - Depiction of Movement in Upper Coa Valley Rock Art" on RockArtBlog. This discussed a 2009 paper by L. Luis and A. P. B. Fernandes "On endless motion: depiction of movement in the Upper Palaeolithic Côa Valley rock art (Portugal)" in which they discussed animal portrayals in terms of implied animation. The walking gait that Horvath et. al. are examining was classified in this study as "Symmetrical animation."

Some images in this posting were retrieved from the internet with a search for public domain photographs. If any of these images are not intended to be public domain, I apologize, and will happily provide the picture credits if the owner will contact me with them. For further information on these reports you should read the original reports at the sites listed below.

REFERENCES:

Faris, Peter

2019 On Endless Motion - Depiction of Movement in Upper Côa Valley Rock Art, Portugal, August 25, 2019, https://rockartblog.blogspot.com/search/label/Coa%20Valley

Horvath, Gabor, Etelka Farkas, Ildiko Boncz, Miklos Blaho, and Gyorgy Kriska,

2012 Cavemen Were Better at Depicting Quadruped Walking than Modern Artists: Erroneous Walking Illustrations in the Fine Arts from Prehistory to Today, December 5, 2012, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0049786

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/figure?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0049786.g003

Luis, L., & Fernandes, A. P. B.

2009 On endless motion: depiction of movement in the Upper Palaeolithic Côa Valley rock art (Portugal), In Congresso International da IFRAO 2009, Piauỉ, Brasil, IFRAO, p. 1304-1318

Stromberg, Joseph

2012 Cavemen Were Much Better At Illustrating Animals Than Artists Today, December 5, 2012, https://www.smithsonianmag.com