Page:Smithsonian Report (1909).djvu/696

564 however, of the laws of perspective is painfully evident. This specimen is from the lower Magdalenian horizon of the cavern of Gourdan (Haute-Garonne).

In the same layer at Gourdan was found another fragment of reindeer horn with panel engravings that are of more than passing interest (fig. 14). That the dorsal view presented difficulties perhaps even greater than those of the front view is seen in the upper left-hand panel. The model in this case was a bovidian. This was a daring artist who sought difficulties he was unable to overcome. Neither was he afraid to acknowledge failure if such it was considered at the time, for his signature appears in two places— above the left horn and opposite the left shoulder. The adjoining panel with fish (pike) in profile is also signed in two places, but by another artist, whose signature, composed of an oval pit with four smaller ones above it, is not unlike a four-pointed coronet. Of the two lower panels only the one on the right is adorned. The principal figure is that of a small antelope running. The body is in profile, while the head is turned from the beholder. The posterior convexity at the base of each ear is indicated, as it was also in the bovidian of the upper panel. The head of a horse viewed from in front is seen just above the antelope. The front view of the head alone presents fewer difficulties than that of the entire animal, as is attested by engravings on a wand from the middle Magdalenian deposits of the rock-shelter of Mège (Dordogne). The artist's representation of a deer's head was so successful that it was repeated with slight variations four times on the shaft of the slender wand (fig. 15). Many representations of the front view are so diagrammatic as to be scarcely recognizable. Some of the processes that lead to conventionalism are simply short cuts to the artist's goal, the goal being to convey a given impression. This can often be done better by evading difficulties than by meeting them. The paleolithic artist