Thanks to a completely automatic remote-controlled camera mounted with a rotatable ball and socket joint on a telescopic pole, a new discovery has been made in the Chauvet Cave
In the heart of the salle du Fond, the ceiling vaults are too high to be accessible and a limestone outcrop, a veritable cone of rock, comes down from the ceiling to end in a point at 1.10 m from the floor. Its lower part, which is accessible, is decorated. Certain faces have already been described. These descriptions are partial and selective ; the progress of the study allows more accuracy or regular modifications regarding certain points. It is on this hanging outcrop that a venus is drawn in black, partially seen face on and partially from one of the rock ridges. Invisible from the zone of passage, she has up to now remained mostly unseen. A marked pubic triangle, at eye level for the artist and for a close spectator, seems to be the heart of the representation. A clearly curved line limits the upper contour. Two lines not joined at the base show the two folds of the groin. The upper junction of these lines, on the left of the design, probably was not present on the right, as if the finish was not a concern. A second curved horizontal line, parallel to the first and just under it, divides the interior of the pubic triangle. After the making of the lines a black filling-in was added by shading and spreading of pigment. This colouring is preferentially centred on the lower part of the triangle, outlining a darker zone and thus perhaps giving an impression of volume. The vulval slit, done later, is clearly indicated by a vertical line incised strongly enough to cut through both the black pigment and the yellow surface film of the rock, and thus appearing in white. All the upper part of the body is missing, but perhaps this was always so. The buttocks could have been at least started, then effaced. These deliberate obliterations should be associated with the drawing of the neighbouring designs. Higher and to the left of the venus, two felines and a little further away, a mammoth, seem to follow a small musk-ox beyond.