Young Hare

A hare crouches alert on a blank ground, every whisker and tuft of fur set down with a patience close to reverence; in its dark eye a tiny window is reflected, the trace of close study at a studio sill. Watercolor and bodycolor let Durer build the coat hair by hair, wet over dry, until the creature seems to breathe. Nothing is allegorized - this is simply the world looked at hard, the empirical curiosity that runs through all his art. He signed and dated it 1502, claiming a humble animal study as a finished work in its own right, worthy of his monogram.