DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.66493#0021
lighting were regular and of the necessary strength and texture, if the
colors and incisions were clear cut and not criss-crossed and pocked by
erosion, then “perhaps” one would need only to avail oneself of a
camera. But only “perhaps.” For a lens cannot differentiate between
that which is essential and that which is not. The result is that it is
extremely difficult if not impossible to obtain an accurate conception
of a rock picture from a photograph.
So there is nothing left but to have the pictures copied by hand,
something which is not easy and which can be done satisfactorily only
by those who have, so to speak, immersed themselves in the material
and are sensitive to the spirit and mentality of an age which has passed.
This will be hard for some people to understand. But the fact remains
that every picture, whether carved into the rock by prehistoric man,
drawn by a child or painted by a Raphael, is alive with a certain
definite spirit, a spirit with which the facsimile must be infused.
There are two schools of thought and action with regard to the
manner in which these pictures, most of them weather-worn and no
longer intact, are to be reproduced. The one is purely scientific. It re-
constructs. It considers the effects of erosion and, by eliminating them,
seeks to reproduce what it believes was the original picture. The
second paints what is there. It knows it is copying not merely a pic-
ture but a document in stone, a cultural document of which the chips,
cracks and weathering are an historical part. This second school is
that of the diafe. Everyone will agree that there is as much to be
said for the one as for the other. But, for the very reason that our col-
lections are documents of fallen grandeur, I insist that we keep on
working in accordance with this principle. And in the course of time
we have developed our own school with its own tradition, a school
which, more and more, is learning to master the technical difficulties
which confront it, a school of whose members I am inordinately proud.
Modern prehistory was born in France. French scholars, schooled
by the finds in the north of that country and in Belgium, with the
19
colors and incisions were clear cut and not criss-crossed and pocked by
erosion, then “perhaps” one would need only to avail oneself of a
camera. But only “perhaps.” For a lens cannot differentiate between
that which is essential and that which is not. The result is that it is
extremely difficult if not impossible to obtain an accurate conception
of a rock picture from a photograph.
So there is nothing left but to have the pictures copied by hand,
something which is not easy and which can be done satisfactorily only
by those who have, so to speak, immersed themselves in the material
and are sensitive to the spirit and mentality of an age which has passed.
This will be hard for some people to understand. But the fact remains
that every picture, whether carved into the rock by prehistoric man,
drawn by a child or painted by a Raphael, is alive with a certain
definite spirit, a spirit with which the facsimile must be infused.
There are two schools of thought and action with regard to the
manner in which these pictures, most of them weather-worn and no
longer intact, are to be reproduced. The one is purely scientific. It re-
constructs. It considers the effects of erosion and, by eliminating them,
seeks to reproduce what it believes was the original picture. The
second paints what is there. It knows it is copying not merely a pic-
ture but a document in stone, a cultural document of which the chips,
cracks and weathering are an historical part. This second school is
that of the diafe. Everyone will agree that there is as much to be
said for the one as for the other. But, for the very reason that our col-
lections are documents of fallen grandeur, I insist that we keep on
working in accordance with this principle. And in the course of time
we have developed our own school with its own tradition, a school
which, more and more, is learning to master the technical difficulties
which confront it, a school of whose members I am inordinately proud.
Modern prehistory was born in France. French scholars, schooled
by the finds in the north of that country and in Belgium, with the
19