became an officer of the Legion of Honour, and is represented in the Luxembourg.
DANNECKER, JOHANN HEINRICH VON (1758–1841), German sculptor, was born at Stuttgart, where his father was employed in the stables of the duke of Württemberg, on the 15th of October 1758. The boy was entered in the military school at the age of thirteen, but after two years he was allowed to take his own taste for art. 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 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. 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. In 1783 he left for Paris with Scheffauer, and placed himself under Pajou. 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. 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 Ceres and Bacchus were done at this time. These are now in the Residenz-schloss, at Stuttgart. On his return to Stuttgart, which he never afterwards quitted except for short trips to Paris, Vienna and Zürich, the double influence of his admiration for Canova and his study of the antique is apparent in his works. The first was a girl lamenting her dead bird, which pretty light motive was much admired. Afterwards, Sappho, in marble for the Lustschloss, and two offering-bearers for the Jagdschloss; Hector, now in the museum, not in marble; the complaint of Ceres, from Schiller’s poem; a statue of Christ, worthy of mention for its nobility, which has been skilfully engraved by Amsler; Psyche; kneeling water-nymph; Love, a favourite he had to repeat. These stock subjects with sculptors had freshness of treatment; and the Ariadne, done a little later, especially had a charm of novelty which has made it a European favourite in a reduced size. It was repeated for the banker Von Bethmann in Frankfort, and it now appears the ornament of the Bethmann Museum. Many of the illustrious men of the time were modelled by him. The original marble of Schiller is now at Weimar; after the poet’s death it was again modelled in colossal size. Lavater, Metternich, Countess Stephanie of Baden, General Benkendorf and others are much prized. Dannecker was director of the Gallery of Stuttgart, and received many academic and other distinctions. His death in 1841 was preceded by a period of mental failure.
DANNEWERK, or Danewerk (Danish, Dannevirke or Danevirke, “Danes’ rampart”), the ancient frontier rampart of the Danes against the Germans, extending 1012 m. from just south of the town of Schleswig to the marshes of the river Trene near the village of Hollingstedt. The rampart was begun by Guðoðr (Godefridus), king of Vestfold, early in the 9th century. In 934 it was passed by the German king Henry I., after which it was extended by King Harold Bluetooth (940–986), but was again stormed by the emperor Otto II. in 974. The chronicler Saxo Grammaticus mentions in his Gesta Danorum the “rampart of Jutland” (Jutiae moenia) as having been once more extended by Valdemar the Great (1157–1182), which has been cited among the proofs that Schleswig (Sønderjylland) forms an integral part of Jutland (Manuel hist. de la question de Slesvig, 1906). After the union of Schleswig and Holstein under the Danish crown, the Danevirke fell into decay, but in 1848 it was hastily strengthened by the Danes, who were, however, unable to hold it in face of the superiority of the Prussian artillery, and on the 23rd of April it was stormed. From 1850 onwards it was again repaired and strengthened at great cost, and was considered impregnable; but in the war of 1864 the Prussians turned it by crossing the Schlei, and it was abandoned by the Danes on the 6th of February without a blow. It was thereupon destroyed by the Prussians; in spite of which, however, a long line of imposing ruins still remains. The systematic excavation of these, begun in 1900, has yielded some notable finds, especially of valuable runic inscriptions (F. de Jessen, La Question de Slesvig, pp. 25, 44-50, &c.).
See Lorenzen, Dannevirke og Omegn (2nd ed., Copenhagen, 1864); H. Handelmann, Das Dannewerk (Kiel, 1885); Philippsen and Sünksen, Führer durch das Danewerk (Hamburg, 1903).
DANSVILLE, a village of Livingston county, New York, U.S.A., 49 m. S. of Rochester, on the Canaseraga Creek. Pop. (1890) 3758; (1900) 3633, of whom 417 were foreign-born; (1905) 3908; (1910) 3938. The village is served by the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western, and the Dansville & Mount Morris railways. At Dansville is the Jackson Health Resort, a large sanatorium, with which a nurses’ training school is connected. There is a public library. The village has large nurseries and vineyards, flour and paper mills, a large printing establishment, a foundry, and a shoe factory. Dansville, named in honour of Daniel P. Faulkner, was settled about 1800, and was incorporated in 1845.
DANTE, Dante (or Durante) Alighieri (1265–1321), the greatest of Italian poets, was born at Florence about the middle of May 1265. He was descended from an ancient family, but from one which at any rate for several generations had belonged to the burgher and not to the knightly class. His biographers have attempted on very slight grounds to deduce his origin from the Frangipani, one of the oldest senatorial families of Rome. We can affirm with greater certainty that he was connected with the Elisei who took part in the building of Florence under Charles the Great. Dante himself does not, with the exception of a few obscure and scattered allusions, carry his ancestry beyond the warrior Cacciaguida, whom he met in the sphere of Mars (Par. xv. 87, foll.). Of Cacciaguida’s family nothing is known. The name, as he told Dante (Par. xv. 139, 5), was given him at his baptism; it has a Teutonic ring. The family may well have sprung from one of the barons who, as Villani tells us, remained behind Otto I. It has been noted that the phrase “Tonde venner quivi” (xvi. 44) seems to imply that they were not Florentines. He further tells his descendant that he was born in the year 1106 (or, if another reading of xvi, 37, 38 be adopted, in 1091), and that he married an Aldighieri from the valley of the Po. Here the German strain appears unmistakably; the name Aldighiero (Aldiger) being purely Teutonic. He also mentions two brothers, Moronte and Eliseo, and that he accompanied the emperor Conrad III. upon his crusade into the Holy Land, where he died (1147) among the infidels. From Eliseo was probably descended the branch of the Elisei; from Aldighiero, son of Cacciaguida, the branch of the Alighieri. Bellincione, son of Aldighiero, was the grandfather of Dante. His father was a second Aldighiero, a lawyer of some reputation. By his first wife, Lapa di Chiarissimo Cialuffii, this Aldighiero had a son Francesco; by his second, Donna Bella, whose family name is not known, Dante and a daughter. Thus the family of Dante held a most respectable position among the citizens of his beloved city; but had it been reckoned in the very first rank they could not have remained in Florence after the defeat of the Guelphs at Montaperti in 1260. It is clear, however, that Dante’s mother at least did so remain, for Dante was born in Florence in 1265. The heads of the Guelph party did not return till 1267.
Dante was born under the sign of the twins, “the glorious stars pregnant with virtue, to whom he owes his genius such as it is.” Astrologers considered this constellation as favourable to literature and science, and Brunetto Latini, the philosopher and diplomatist, his instructor, tells him in the Inferno (xv. 25, foll.) that, if he follows its guidance, he cannot fail to reach the harbour of fame. Boccaccio relates that before his birth his mother dreamed that she lay under a very lofty laurel, growing in a green meadow, by a very clear fountain, when she felt the pangs of childbirth,—that her child, feeding on the berries which fell from the laurel, and on the waters of the fountain, in a very short time became a shepherd, and attempted to reach the leaves of the laurel, the fruit of which had nurtured him,—that, trying to obtain them he fell, and rose up, no longer a man, but in the guise of a peacock. We know little of Dante’s boyhood except that he was a hard student and was profoundly influenced by
