Palaeolithic Art - Four Hundred Centuries of Cave Art. By
the Abbe H. Breuil. (Fernand Windels. English Agents: Zwemmer. £7 10s. 00 THE original great discoveries of Upper Palaeolithic cave art were made a long time ago; that of Altamira was published in 1880, La Mouthe discovered in 1895, Pair-non-Pair in the following year, and Font de Gaume and Combarelles in 1902. Since that time discovery has proceeded apace, culminating in the exciting find of Montespan by Norbert Casteret in 1925, and the discovery of Lascaux in 1940 by four French schoolboys. These and many others have been described in learned periodicals and in illustrated lectures; some of the decorated caves have had special and expensive monographs written about them; and the chef d'oeuvres of the Upper Palaeolithic artists are now the commonplaces of textbooks on prehistory and art. But, until the publication of this present book, there has been no general or comprehensive survey of cave art.
This is not a definitive publication on cave art; it is not a corpus of Upper Palaeolithic art—such a thing would in any case require a library of volumes—but it does give in its 400-odd pages and its 531 illustrations a general view of the quality and variety of this oldest phase of man's artistic achievement such as has never before been available and which was most needed. This is an icpensive book, but it is no more expensive than many a book on aspects or styles of historic art. It should be on the shelves of all public libraries as well as those specialised institutions dealing with archaeology and art for whom it is quite indispensable.
To write of Palaeolithic art it is essential to visit the caves of Western Europe and to remain long in contemplation of these early masterpieces in their intended settings. Professor Breuil admits that he has not visited every one of the sites described here—there are about a hundred—but he has visited almost all of them; no other European scholar has seen as many. To some of these sites Breuil has devoted months of patient work, tracing and copying, and many of the drawings published here, especially those of Les Trois-Freres, for example, have never been published before, and are a primary document for prehistoric research. Reproductions of Palaeolithic art are sometimes criticised because they are drawings by Breuil and others and not direct photographs; but it should be remembered that direct photography is often impossible, and that the patient fingers and experienced eye of a trained archaeologist can record what the hasty visitor or camera cannot see.
The magnificent direct photographs of Lascaux did a great deal to silence the criticism that the style of Upper Palaeolithic art c wed much to its tracers and recorders. Many of these photographs were the work of Fernand Windels of Montignac, and his book on The Lascaux Cave Paintings (Faber, 1949) made many sigh for a similar book on cave art in general. This present publication is that book; the arrangement of photographs and the general production are by Windels and the text by Breuil. It contains many direct photo- graphs—seventy of them taken by Windels himself—and is a delight to handle and study as well as a primary work of scholarship.
The book has, first, fifty pages of introductory text on Palaeolithic art in general and the styles and dating of cave art in particular; then a full treatment of the caves that are &scribed as the "six giants," namely Altamira, Font de Gaume,. `Les Combarelles, Lascaux, Les Trois-Freres and Niaux, and then a description of all the other sites with cave art from Poitou to La Pileta in Southern Spain and Levanzo in Sicily. The original text and the original edition are in French; the English translation is the least happy thing about this book. It is a splendid example of cooperation between scholar and author on the one hand and technical photographer and publisher on the other; the only criticism I have of this co-operation is that the text should be more interspersed than it is with cross-references to the photographs. It is often difficult to know to which photographs Breuil is referring, and whether indeed some of the paintings and engravings he described are represented in the book. And, although there are detailed maps, there should be one general map showing the distribution of all the sites described.
It is a splendid thing that, after an active life full of original research in Europe and Africa, the Abbe Breuil can in his retirement still find time and energy to write such a book as this, and that in Winders he has found a person of such skill and taste to co-operate with him. Let us hope this is not the end of their fruitful co-operation, and that we shall not have to wait long for "Four Hundred Centuries of
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