His two most celebrated works are Ariadne riding on a panther, and his statue of Christ. The circumstances under which the latter was produced are very peculiar. Dannecker was a devout Lutheran, and he often meditated upon a statue of the Mediator between God and man as the highest problem of Art. He sought to embody it, but felt that something was wanting. A child, who was accustomed to run about his studio, came in while he was at his work. “Who do you think that is?” said the artist, pointing to his model. The child looked, and replied: “I don’t know; I guess it is some great king.” Ah, thought Dannecker, I have made the expression of power to predominate over love. The search after a perfect ideal of the Divine and human combined took complete possession of his mind. Filled with such thoughts, he fell asleep and dreamed of a face and form transcending anything he had conceived. He hastened to model it in clay, while the vision was still fresh in his mind. When it was shown to the child, he at once exclaimed, “That is the Redeemer. Mother reads to me about him, where he says, ‘Suffer little children to come unto me.’” This confirmed Dannecker in the belief that he had been directly inspired from above. Others regarded it as a dream produced by the intense activity of his thoughts concentrated upon one subject; but he always viewed it as an immediate revelation. He was fifty-eight years old when this sublime vision was presented to him in his sleep, and for eight years he devoted to it all the energies of mind and heart. He studied the Scriptures intently, and prayed for Divine assistance. His enthusiasm was a compound of Religion and Art. Under this combined influence, he said he felt as if he were pursued by some irresistible power, which visited him in his sleep, and often compelled him to rise in the night and embody the ideas which had been presented to him. When he was sixty-six years old, the glorious statue was completed. It is clothed in a simple robe reaching to the feet. The hair is parted on the forehead, and falls in ringlets over the shoulders. The head is purely moral and intellectual in its outline. One hand is pressed upon the bosom, the other extended, and the lips are partially unclosed, as if in the act of speaking. The expression is said to be a remarkable combination of majesty and tenderness, exciting involuntary reverence in all who look upon it.
Mrs. Jameson visited Dannecker in 1830. The statue was still standing in his studio. She says: “He told me that the figure had visited him in a dream three several times, and that he firmly believed he had been predestined to the work, and divinely inspired. I shall not easily forget the countenance of the good and gifted old man, as he leaned on the pedestal, with his cap in his hand, and his long gray hair waving round his face, looking up at his work with a mixture of reverence and exultation.”
This remarkable statue was purchased by the Emperor Alexander, and is now in Russia. A year after its completion, he made a colossal statue of the Evangelist John, for the royal chapel at Rothenberg. He had for many years been Professor of the Fine Arts at the Academy in Stuttgard, and the instructions he was obliged to give there, combined with the labors of his studio, kept him very constantly occupied. Mrs. Jameson again visited him in 1833, when he was seventy five years old. She says: “A change had come over him. His trembling hand could no longer grasp the mallet or guide the chisel. His fine benevolent countenance wore a childish smile, and was only now and then crossed by a gleam of awakened memory or thought. Yet he seemed perfectly happy. He walked backward and forward from his statue of Christ to his bust of Schiller, with an unwearied self-complacency, in which there was something mournful, yet delightful. While I was looking at the magnificent head of Schiller, he took my hand, and trembling with emotion, said, ‘We were friends from boyhood. I worked upon it with love and grief; and one can do no more.’ I took leave of Dannecker with emotion. I shall never see him again. But he is one of those who cannot die. Canova, after he was a melancholy invalid, visited his studio, and was so much struck by his childlike simplicity, his pure, unworldly nature, his genuine goodness, and lively, happy temperament, that he gave him the surname of Il Beato, The Blessed. And surely if that epithet can with propriety be bestowed upon any mortal, it is on him whose long life has been one of labor and of love; who has left behind him lasting memorials of his genius; who has never profaned to any unworthy purpose the talents which God has given him, but, in the midst of all the beautiful and exciting influences of Poetry and Art, has kept, from youth to age, a soul serene, a conscience and a life pure in the sight of God and man.”
Longfellow, in his prose-poem called “Hyperion,” thus introduces the renowned German artist, on a calm Sabbath forenoon:—“Flemming stole out into the deserted street, and went to visit the veteran sculptor Dannecker. He found him in his parlor, sitting alone, with his psalm-book and the reminiscences of his long life. As Flemming entered, he arose from the sofa and tottered toward him; a venerable old man, of low stature, and dressed in a loose white jacket, with a face like Franklin’s, his white hair flowing over his shoulders, and a pale blue eye.
“‘So you are from America,’ said he. ‘I have never been in America. I shall never go there. I am now too old. I have been in Paris and in Rome. But that was long ago. I am now seventy-eight years old.’
“He took Flemming by the hand, and made him sit by his side on the sofa. And Flemming felt a mysterious awe creep over him, on touching the hand of the good old man, who sat so serenely amid the gathering shade of years, and listened to life’s curfew-bell, telling, with eight and seventy solemn strokes, that the hour had come, when the fires of all earthly passion must be quenched within, and man must prepare to lie down and rest till morning.
“‘You see,’ he continued, ‘my hands are cold. They were warmer once. I am now an old man.’
“‘Yet these are the hands that sculptured the beautiful Ariadne and the Panther,’ replied Flemming. ‘The soul never grows old.’
“‘Nor does Nature,’ said the old man, pleased with this allusion to his great work, and pointing to the green trees before his window. ‘This pleasure I have left to me. My sight is still good. I can even distinguish objects on the side of yonder mountain. My hearing is also unimpaired. For all which I thank God.’
“Directing Flemming’s attention to a fine engraving which hung on the opposite wall of the room, he continued: ‘That is an engraving of Canova’s Religion. I love to sit here and look at it, for hours together. It is beautiful. He made the statue for his native town, where they had no church, until he built them one. He placed the statue in it. He sent me this engraving as a present. Ah, he was a dear, good man! The name of his native town I have forgotten. My memory fails me. I cannot remember names.’