Johann Heinrieh Von Dannecker, a German sculptor, born at Waldenbuch, near Stuttgart, Oct. 15, 1758, died in Stuttgart, Dec. 8, 1841. His father was groom to the duke of Wiirtem-berg, and Dannecker grew up with a very limited education. He manifested a taste for drawing at a very early age, and for want of better materials resorted to the yard of a stonecutter, and covered the slabs there with his designs. In 1771 he entered the military school established by the duke at Ludwigs-burg. When he was 18 he obtained a prize for his model of Milo of Crotona. He here formed a friendship with Schiller, in whose memory he sculptured a noble statue and several busts, one of them of colossal size. On leaving the school in 1780, he was appointed statuary to the court, and three years afterward went to Paris on foot, having only his salary as statuary, about $125 a year. He remained two years in Paris, studying under Pajou, and then made his way on foot to Rome, where he made statues of Ceres and Bacchus, which procured his admission into the academies of Milan and Bologna. In 1790, having spent five years in Rome, he returned to his native country, and was made a professor of the fine arts in the academy of Stuttgart. In 1796 he produced several works in marble, among them a Sappho; and afterward he was employed by Frederick of Wtirtemberg upon a monument to Count Zeppelin, representing a figure of Friendship weeping over a coffin.

Next he made his Ariadne, and in 1812 he was employed by King Frederick on a statue of Cupid. His greatest work is his colossal statue of Christ, on which he spent eight years; this was ordered by the empress-mother of Russia, and presented to her son Alexander I. In 1826 he executed a statue of St. John, which is also ranked with his best productions. An account of the life, and works of Dannecker was published at Hamburg in 1841, with illustrations of his principal works.