Wing of a Blue Roller 1512

Albrecht Dürer captured this wing of a blue roller with watercolor around 1512. Birds, especially their wings, have been potent symbols throughout history and across cultures, embodying notions of freedom, divinity, and the soul's journey. Consider the ancient Egyptian Ba, a bird-like representation of the soul that could fly between the worlds of the living and the dead. Or the Greek figure of Icarus, whose wings granted him flight but also led to his downfall, symbolizing the perils of hubris. The symbolic weight of the wing extends even to religious contexts such as angels and demons. Here, the meticulous detail with which Dürer renders each feather evokes a sense of wonder and reverence for the natural world. The wing, caught in a moment of stillness, invites us to reflect on our own aspirations and limitations. The bird's wing thus becomes a vessel, carrying the weight of human emotion and subconscious desire, a powerful emblem of the eternal dance between aspiration and reality.