Chauvet Cave - The cave paintings and rock art of Chauvet

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Chauvet Cave

The cave paintings and rock art of Chauvet

The Chauvet Cave is located near the Vallon-Pont-d'Arc in the Ardèche region of southern France. The Cave Paintings of Chauvet date to 30,000 to 32,000 years ago. In the Chauvet Cave hundreds of animal paintings have been found making Chauvet Cave one of the world's most important rock art sites.

Chauvet Cave Through the Eyes of a Sculptor

Visit to the Chauvet Cave in 1999 by John Robinson

Across the chamber to the right is a wonderful large red Rhinoceros, a possible Insect 18 inches high, and a positive red Hand with a wonderful arch of 20 or so red fingertip dots beside it. At the end of this panel, but significantly separate, is a negative Hand done by spraying paint over the hand when it is against the rock, rather than pressing the wet painted hand against the wall. The negative Hand to me is very feminine. The fingers are abnormally long and the third finger is unnaturally bent the wrong way in an elegant arc out towards the little finger. The positive Hand is stubby and masculine. This section of the cave face seems to have been reserved for symbols.

On into the Candle Gallery, so named for the stalagmites. Here not a single painting or symbol has yet been found. Why? There are walls here that would have made wonderful canvases. I started to get the feeling that everything in the Chauvet Cave was very well organised and planned.After passing through the 30 yard long Candle Gallery, we stepped out into the enormous Chamber Hillaire. It is huge, 30 yards across, 40 yards long, and very high. Right in the middle of the Chamber there is a gigantic pit where the floor has caved in. The circular hole is 20 feet across and at least fifteen feet deep. Shining my headlamp down I could see wide cracks in the floor of the pit amongst a tumble of rocks. The edges are crumbly and unstable. It all looked very dangerous to me and quite impossible to get out if you fell in.

Looking across to the other side of the pit I could see the layers of silt that had been laid down over aeons of time to build up the flat floors of the caves. This is one of the features of caves that I have always recognised as giving them such a religious air. Walking around in caves is a bit like walking around in churches, because both have flat floors, both have paintings on the walls, and both have sacred places in special niches.

The pit is obviously continuing to slowly expand, as on a low section of the roof of the cave is a panel that sticks well out beyond the pit edge. On this panel is engraved one of the most remarkable and imaginative drawings in the cave, an Owl, shown looking back over his shoulders with its head twisted 180 degrees from the front. Of course we all know that owls can do this, but if asked to draw an owl, how many of us would depict it like this? I suggest not very many, if any. Yet the artist who drew this owl did, and in doing so truly showed how brilliant he was at draftsmanship, but also how incredibly imaginative he was. I was becoming very much aware of the fact that I was in the presence of Works done by Artistic Masters.

Following along the plastic strip and crossing over to our right, Jean led us to a wall of engravings.

	One of these was of a beautiful horse, done with a half inch wide chisel type tool, perhaps a stick, perhaps a bear rib bone. The lines are free and flowing, no trial and error, just clean sweeps of the tool. Along the length of the horse are some wavy lines, starting from the right as three and finishing as two on the left.