DANNECKER, Johann Heinrich von (1758-1841), one of the best German sculptors. He was born at Stuttgart, where his father was employed in the stables of the duke of Wurtemberg, 15th October 1758. The boy was entered in the military school at the age of thirteen, and continued there two years, when, his bias and hi3 talent having manifested themselves, he was allowed to take his own way, although there had been some idea of making him a dancer. Once freed from his juvenile difficulties his success was pretty secure, and we find him at once associating with the young sculptors Scheffauer and Le Jeune, the painters Guibal and Harper, and also with Schiller, and the much-admired musician Zumsteeg. His busts of some of these are good; that of Schiller is well known. In his eighteenth year he carried off the prize at the Concours with his model of Milo of Crotona, the strong man who died by having his hand caught in the rent stump of a tree, a favourite subject with young sculptors. On this the duke made him sculptor to the palace (1780), and for some time he was employed on child-angels and caryatides for the decoration of the reception rooms. This work did not please him very much, and in 1783, in his twenty-fourth year, he left for Paris with Scheffauer, and placed himself under Pajoufor a time. His Mars, a sitting figure sent home to Stuttgart, marks this period; and we next find him, still travelling with his friend, at Rome in 1785, where he settled down to work hard for five years, during which his position in the future art history of his native land was securely made. Goethe and Herder were then in Rome and became his friends, as well as Canova, who was the hero of the day, and who had undoubtedly a great authoritative influence on his style. His marble statues of ...