As readers will be able to see from my recent columns on foreshortening in rock art, I am fascinated by these incredibly early manifestations of portraying aspects of perspective that we thought had only been discovered (or invented) during the Renaissance. Along with foreshortening, ancient cave artists are known to have used the technique known as Anamorphism or Anamorphosis in which an image that is meant to be seen at an extreme angle will have its proportions altered to look more normal from that angle.
In March of last year I wrote a column in RockArtBlog about an example of reported Anamorphosis (Anamorphism) in Lascaux Cave - a red auroch (Faris 2022). "The Stone Age cave paintings at Lascaux may make use of anamorphic technique, because the oblique angles of the cave would otherwise result in distorted figures from a viewer's perspective." (Wikipedia) The Lascaux art dates to the Magdalenian period of ca. 17,000 years BP. It would appear that the artists of the painted caves in Europe had discovered the optical distortions of angle and distance on an image and also used anamaphosis to counter them. “When our ancestors painted beautiful works of art, were they intending them to be viewed by others, or did they just paint for their own pleasure? The Lascaux caves in the Dordogne region of France, may have the answer. There you can see a painting of a red cow with a black head high on one of the walls. Up close the cow appears to be stretched from head to toe, but when viewed from the ground the cow regains normal proportions. This technique, known as anamorphosis, is highly advanced and suggests the painter was considering his audience as he painted the cow.” (Ravilious 2010)
The anamorphosis of the red auroch in the Megaloceros room is angled so that it would look correct to a viewer coming from the passage visible in the photograph forward toward it. The head is small and the body is outsized and elongated so viewing it from that position would make it seem to be more correctly proportioned. This suggests that the animal may have been painted by an apprentice reacting to instructions from a master positioned at the far end of the room. “Put the line there, no, a little farther back.” From that viewpoint anamorphosis would work to make it look correct to him, but out of proportion when seen from any other angle.
I was recently reading a small book titled “The Oldest Enigma of Humanity” (David, and Jacques-Lefrere 2013) when I ran across a single line description under an illustration that said “Anamorphic rhinoceros in the Chauvet Cave.” And in a single glance I confirmed that the rhinoceros illustrated appears to display anamorphosis. This led me to search online for “Chauvet cave art public domain” to check for this and any other examples that might be found.
Further searching has turned up examples of painted animals in the Chauvet Cave, which, based upon recent dating studies, makes its art 10 to 15 thousand years older. “Based on radiocarbon dating, the cave appears to have been used by humans during two distinct periods: the Aurignacian and the Gravettian. Most of the artwork dates to the earlier, Aurignacian, era (32,000 to 30,000 years ago). The later Gravettian occupation, which occurred 27,000 to 25,000 years ago, left little but a child's footprints, the charred remains of ancient hearths, and carbon smoke stains from torches that lit the caves. The footprints may be the oldest human footprints that can be dated accurately. After the child's visit to the cave, evidence suggests that due to a landslide which covered its historical entrance, the cave remained untouched until it was discovered in 1994.” (Wikipedia)
A detailed study published in 2016 pushed the dates for the paintings in Chauvet back about 10,000 years. “From their analysis, the researchers discovered a totally new timeline for the cave. According to their results, humans left their first marks inside the Chauvet Pont d'Arc Cave from 37,000 to 33,500 years ago, and then occupied the cave again from 31,000 to 28,000 years ago. Analysis of the animal bones, meanwhile, show that cave bears also liked to prowl the cave up until about 33,000 years ago—although the researchers don’t think humans and bears tried to live in the cave at the same time.” (Pilny 2016)
In the other examples here we must keep in mind that the abnormally thickened bodies of many of them may just be a stylistic feature and possibly not anamorphosis. Now, I have not personally had the opportunity to visit Chauvet so I do not know the locations of these examples I have selected. If they are anywhere near eye level for easy viewing their proportions are merely stylistically exaggerated. If, however, they are somewhere up higher on the cave wall then the exaggerated proportions may indicate anamorphosis from 37,000 to 33,500 BCE.
The art of Chauvet is undeniably spectacular, and now we know it is considerably older than previously thought. This means that the development of anamorphism was much earlier than we thought.
NOTE: 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:
David, Bertrand, and Jean Jacques-Lefrere, 2013, The Oldest Enigma of Humanity, Arcade Publishing, New York.
Faris, Peter, 2022, Another Example of Perspective Anamorphosis in Rock Art – The Lascaux Red Bull, 19 March 2022, https://rockartblog.blogspot.com/search/label/anamorphosis
Pilny, Susanna, 2016, French cave paintings are 10,0 00 years older than we thought, oldest in
the world, 12 April 2016, https://www.redorbit.com/news/.
Accessed online 17 June 2023.
Ravilious, Kate, 2010, The Writing on the Cave Wall, New Scientist, 17 February 2010, https://www.sott.net/article/203166-The-writing-on-the-cave-wall.
Wikipedia, Chauvet Cave, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chauvet_Cave. Accessed 29 June 2022.
Wikipedia, Anamorphosis, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anamorphosis#.
Accessed 30 June 2023.
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