To See the World in a Great Piece of Turf…
Celebrating the small, tangible things in our everyday world with Dürer and considering why we still connect with his vision, half a millennium later.
Have you ever sat in the grass of a summer meadow, perhaps as a child, to make a daisy chain, or to examine a cricket singing? Only to be mesmerised by the many plants and flowers flourishing together at your feet? I remember marvelling at a large golden bee which visited each tiny pink Herb Robert flower to collect its drop of nectar, almost bending the little flower stems double when it landed upon them.
This sense of wonder is sparked when looking at Albrecht Dürer’s The Great Piece of Turf / Das große Rasenstück, completed in 1503. Dürer was one of the first artists to paint ‘en plein air’ (in the open air), although he may well have completed this painting in his Nuremberg studio workshop.
We are drawn into this intimate view, almost as though we are lying down on the grass to examine a random spot of meadow that grew 500 years ago. He represents every natural plant — dandelion, plantain, germander, speedwell, yarrow, and grasses — in exquisite, scientific detail. His approach here established our expectations of what natural history illustration should look like.
