Great Piece of Turf
| Great Piece of Turf | |
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| Artist | Albrecht Dürer |
| Year | 1503 |
| Type | Watercolour, pen and ink |
| Dimensions | 40.3 cm × 31.1 cm ( 15 7⁄8 in × 12 1⁄4 in) |
| Location | Albertina, Vienna |
The Great Piece of Turf (German: Das große Rasenstück) is a watercolor painting by Albrecht Dürer. The painting was created at Dürer's workshop in Nuremberg in 1503. It is a study of a seemingly unordered group of wild plants, including dandelion and greater plantain. The work is considered one of the masterpieces of Dürer's realistic nature studies.
In 1495 Dürer returned from his Wanderjahre in Italy and settled in Nuremberg, where he opened a workshop. Dürer was only twenty-four years old at the time, but his workshop soon gained a great reputation for the high quality of his work. In 1500 he produced what is perhaps his most famous work, his Christ-like Self-Portrait. At the same time he was also creating smaller-scale works that were more focused on the study of nature, such as the Great Piece of Turf, which he painted in 1503, and the Young Hare from the year before.
The watercolour shows a large piece of turf and little else. The various plants can be identified as cock's-foot, creeping bent, smooth meadow-grass, daisy, dandelion, germander speedwell, greater plantain, hound's-tongue and yarrow.
The painting shows a great level of realism in its portrayal of natural objects. Some of the roots have been stripped of earth to be displayed clearly to the spectator. The depiction of roots is something that can also be found in other of Dürer's works, such as Knight, Death, and the Devil (1513). The vegetation comes to an end on the right side of the panel, while on the left it seems to continue on indefinitely. The background is left blank, and on the right can even be seen a clear line where the vegetation ends.
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