Wing of a European Roller

Wing of a European Roller (or Wing of a Blue Roller) is a watercolor nature study by Albrecht Dürer created in 1500 or 1512. The artist based the artwork on a dead specimen. Next to this painting of a wing, Dürer created another artwork depicting the whole bird. Dürer painted both pictures on very fine parchment.

The European roller is a migratory bird still native to Central Europe; in Dürer's time it was particularly fascinating because of its radiant turquoise plumage. The bird's wing, viewed from above, dominates the image, spreading across the sheet. The colors of the feathers, in shades ranging from turquoise and teal to dark grey, are stunning. Dürer shows every detail with the most excellent zoological precision. The wound visible on the right side of the wing suggests that it was severed by force, while the missing feathers on the left indicate that the bird has been caught and tangled in a net. 

Dürer was the first artist to capture animals and plants carefully and almost photographically; nature was a great source of inspiration for him. In his own words: “Nature holds the beautiful, for the artist who has the insight to extract it. Thus, beauty lies even in humble, perhaps ugly things, and the ideal, which bypasses or improves on nature, may not be truly beautiful in the end.”

We present this work, which belongs to the Albertina's collection, thanks to Europeana, a web portal created by the European Union containing digitized cultural heritage collections of more than 3,000 institutions across Europe.  :)

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P.S. Please enjoy the best of the best of Dürer's representations of animals.  :)