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Artwork · 1506 · Animal painting

The Little Owl

Albrecht Durer
1506 · Watercolor on Canvas
Albertina, Vienna
★ 5.2 editorial score

A small owl faces us square, its great dark eyes fixed on the viewer, talons hooked over a ledge - another of Durer's nature studies carried to uncanny life in watercolor and bodycolor. Owls trailed centuries of symbolism in the North, wisdom and folly and ill omen by turns, but here the bird is mostly just itself, seen with the same hungry attention he gave the hare. Dated 1508 and monogrammed, it belongs to the body of studies in which Durer treated a single creature as a subject grand enough to stand alone - the natural world looked at without a story.

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Other media onSubject·Birds
Quote · 1977

“There is a legend about a bird which sings just once in its life, more sweetly than any other creature on the face of the earth. From the moment it leaves the nest it searches for a thorn tree, and does not rest until it has found one. Then, singing among the savage branches, it impales itself upon the longest, sharpest spine. And, dying, it rises above its own agony to out-carol the lark and the nightingale. One superlative song, existence the price. But the whole world stills to listen, and God in His heaven smiles. For the best is only bought at the cost of great pain.”

Colleen McCullough