Add Goethe and the Duke of Weimar, and a hundred other instances. The difficulty would be to find one, in which the patronage of the great has not been repaid ten thousand fold in gratitude and fame. Dannecker's love for his native city, and his native princes, prevailed over his self-interest; his decision was honourable to his heart; but it is not less certain that at Munich he would have found more enlightened patronage, and a wider scope for his talents. Frederic, the late king of Wurtemburg, who had married our princess royal, was a man of a coarse mind and profligate habits. Napoleon had gratified his vulgar ambition by making him a king, and thereupon he stuck a huge, tawdry gilt crown on the top of his palace, the impudent sign of his subservient majesty. I never looked at it without thinking of an overgrown child and its new toy; he also, to commemorate the acquisition of his kingly titles, instituted the order of the Wurtemburg crown, and Dannecker was gratified by this new order of merit, and a bit of ribbon in his button-hole.
But in the mean time the model of the Ariadne remained in his studio, and it was not till the year 1809 that he could afford to purchase a block of marble, and begin the statue on speculation. It occupied him for seven years, but in the interval he completed other beautiful works. The king ordered him to execute a Cupid in marble, for which he gave him the design. It was a design which displeased the pure mind and high taste of Dannecker; he would not so desecrate his divine art: "c'etait travailler pour le diable!" said he to me, in telling the story. He therefore only half fulfilled his commission; and changing the purpose and sentiment of the figure, he represented the Greek Cupid at the moment that he is waked by the drop of burning oil from Psyche's lamp. An English general, I believe Sir John Murray, saw this charming statue, in 1814, and immediately commanded a work from the sculptor's hands: he wished, but did not absolutely require, a duplicate of the statue he so admired. Dannecker, instead of repeating himself, produced his Psyche, whom he has represented—not as the Greek allegorical Psyche, the bride of Cupid, "with lucent fans, fluttering"—but as the abstract personification of the human soul; or, to use Dannecker's own words, "Ein rein, sittlich, sinniges Wesen,"—a pure, moral, intellectual being. As he had an idea that Love had become moral and sentimental after he had been waked by the drop of burning oil, so I could not help asking him whether this was Psyche, grown reasonable after she had beheld the wings of Love? He has not in this beautiful statue quite accomplished his own idea. It has much girlish grace and simplicity, but it wants elevation; it is not sufficiently ideal, and will not stand a comparison either with the Psyche of Westmacott, or that of Canova. The Ariadne was finished in 1816, but the sculptor was disappointed in his hope that this, his masterpiece, would adorn his native city. The king showed no desire to possess it, and it was purchased by M. Bethmann, of Frankfort, for a sum equal to about one thousand pounds. Soon after the Ariadne was finished, Dannecker conceived, in a moment of pious enthusiasm, his famous statue of the Redeemer, which has caused a great deal of discussion in Germany. This was standing in his work-room when we paid our first visit to him. He told me what I had often heard, that the figure had visited him in a dream three several times; and the good old man firmly believed that he had been divinely inspired, and predestined to the work. While the visionary image was fresh in his imagination, he first executed a small clay model, and placed it before a child of five or six years old;—there were none of the usual emblematical accompaniments—no cross—no crown of thorns to assist the fancy—nothing but the simple figure roughly modelled; yet the child immediately exclaimed, "The Redeemer!" and Dannecker was confirmed in his design. Gradually the completion of this statue became the one engrossing idea of his enthusiastic mind: for eight years it was his dream by night, his thought by day; all things else, all the affairs and duties of life, merged into this. He told me that he frequently felt as if pursued, excited by some strong, irresistible power, which would even visit him in sleep, and impel him to rise from his bed and work. He explained to me some of the difficulties he encountered, and which he was persuaded that he had perfectly overcome only through divine aid, and the constant study of the Scriptures. They were not few nor trifling. Physical power, majesty, and beauty, formed no part of the character of the Saviour of the world: the glory that was around him was not of this earth, nor visible to the eye; "there was nothing in him that he should be desired;" therefore to throw into the impersonation of exceeding humility and benignity a superhuman grace, and from material elements work out a manifestation of abstract moral grandeur—this was surely not only a new and difficult, but a bold and sublime enterprize.
You remember Michael Angelo's statue of Christ in the church of Santa Maria sopra Minerva at Rome?
MEDON.
Perfectly; and I never looked at it without thinking of Neptune and his trident.
ALDA.
The same thought occurred to me, and must inevitably have occurred to others. Dannecker is not certainly so great a man as Michael Angelo, but here he has surpassed him. Instead of emulating the antique models, he has worked in the antique spirit—the spirit of faith and enthusiasm. He has taken a new form in which to clothe a grand poetical conception. Whether the being he has represented be a fit subject for the plastic art, has been disputed; but it appears to me that Dannecker has more nearly approached the christian ideal than any of his predecessors; there is nothing to be compared to it, except Titian's Christo della Moneta, and that is a head merely. The sentiment chosen by the sculptor is expressed in the inscription on the pedestal: "Through me, to the Father." The proportions of the figure are exceedingly slender and delicate; the attitude a little drooping; one hand is pressed on the bosom, the other extended; the lips are unclosed as in the act to speak. In the head and facial line, by carefully throwing out every indication of the animal propensities, and giving added importance and development to all that indicates the moral and intellectual faculties, he has succeeded in embodying a species of ideal, of which there is no other example in art. I have heard, (not from Dannecker himself,) that when the head of the Jupiter Tonans was placed beside the Christ, the merely physical grandeur of the former, compared with the purely intellectual expression of the latter, reminded every one present of a lion's head erect and humanized.
MEDON.
But what were your own impressions? After all this eulogium, which I believe to be just, tell me frankly, were you satisfied yourself?
ALDA.