The Little Owl

The Little Owl
1506 by Albrecht Dürer

In order to practice for my German proficiency exam, I spent the summer between my Junior and Senior year travelling around Germany, Austria and Switzerland. I was overwhelmed by the beauty of Austria and in particular the enormous amount of artwork in Vienna. That was my first real world exposure to the works of Dürer and I remain, now as then, astonished by the vividness and modernity of works such as The Little Owl, half a millennium old though it might be.