Dance of Death (French danse macabre, German Toten-tanz)
A pictorial and literary theme originating in the late Middle Ages, in which Death, usually in the form of a skeletal musician, leads away representatives of every class of society, from pope to beggar, from emperor to peasant. The dance of Death appeared first in the form of murals in churches, the earliest being recorded in Paris, dating from the mid-1420s (now destroyed). Other early examples of dance of Death murals were to be found elsewhere in France, in England, Switzerland, Germany, and Italy. It was also treated in other media—stained glass, tapestry, embroidery, and sculpture.
The first printed edition of a dance of Death cycle combining verses and woodcuts issued from the Parisian press ofGuyot Marchant in 1485. Prior to tht, manuscript versions of the dance of Death texts had appeared in both Spain (Dan$a general de la muerte, c. 1400) and Germany (the Lubeck Totentanz, 1463). The most famous treatment of the theme was by Hans holbein the younger in a series of 50 woodcuts designed about 1523/24 and printed at Lyons in 1538.
Daniel, Samuel
(1562-1619) English poet Daniel was probably born near Taunton, went to Oxford in 1579, and then may have visited Italy. In the 1590s Mary herbert, Countess of Pembroke appointed him as tutor to her son William, and from this congenial literary milieu he published his first poems, the sonnet sequence Delia and the Complaynt of Rosamond (both 1592). His Senecan tragedy Cleopatra was published in 1594. The first edition of his major work, a long poem in eight-line stanzas on the Civil Wars (i.e. the Wars of the Roses), appeared in 1595; a considerably revised and enlarged version came out in 1609, showing Daniel’s subtle and thoughtful approach to political philosophy. His Defence of Rhyme (1602) is a refutation of Thomas Campion’s tract on the unsuitability of rhyme in English verse. He wrote a number of court masques and was eventually put in charge of a troupe of boy actors, the Children of the Queen’s Revels (1615-18). He was a friend and brother-in-law of John florio.
Daniele (Ricciarelli) da Volterra
(1509-1566) Italian painter and sculptor
Trained under Sodoma, Daniele is best known as a close associate of michelangelo. After moving to Rome in about 1541, he executed several notable frescoes, the most celebrated being the Deposition (1541) in the Orsini chapel in Sta. Trinita dei Monti, in which his skill as a draftsman is evident. Daniele is, however, usually remembered as the artist who was commissioned to paint loincloths on the nude figures in Michelangelo’s Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel—for which he acquired the nickname "Il Braghettone" (the breeches maker). He also produced a bronze portrait bust (c. 1564; Bargello, Florence, and Louvre, Paris) of Michelangelo and was present at the latter’s deathbed.
Dante Alighieri
(1265-1321) Italian poet Alighiero d’Alighiero, Dante’s father, was a Florentine Guelph belonging to the lower nobility. His mother died while he was a child; his father remarried and had nine children by his second wife. Dante received a sound education though little is known of it in detail; he studied rhetoric under Brunetto Latini and in his youthful verse came under the influence of cavalcanti. His marriage, to Gemma di Manetto Donati, was arranged, taking place soon after his father’s death in 1283; there were two sons (Pietro and Jacopo) and perhaps daughters by the marriage.
Dante fought in the battle of Campaldino (1289) and for several years took part in public life. He was one of the six priors (chief officials of the council) of Florence in 1300 when strife between the Black and White factions of the Guelph party led to the exile of Cavalcanti, among others. The following year Dante, who opposed papal policies, was taking part in a delegation to Boniface VIII when the Blacks seized control of Florence and condemned him to exile. The possibility of returning only arose when Emperor Henry VII, whom Dante supported, entered Italy in 1310, but the failure of the emperor’s cause and his unexpected death (1313) put an end to Dante’s hopes. The long period of exile was spent in apparently extensive wanderings, during which Dante found refuge with Cangrande della scala in Verona and finally with Guido da Polenta in Ravenna, where he died. The Vita Nuova (New Life; 1292-1300), lyrics joined by prose commentaries, concerns Dante’s love for Beatrice, a figure who later plays a major role in the divine comedy. The historical existence of Beatrice is doubtful; she was perhaps the daughter of Folco Portinari, later the wife of Si-mone de’ Bardi, and died in 1290. Dante says that he met her when she was nine and again when she was 18 years old. He finds solace for his grief at her death in the consolation of philosophy (as conceived by Cicero and Boethius). The Convivio (Feast; 1304-08) and the Latin treatise De vulgari eloquentia (On Eloquence in the Vernacular Tongue; after 1304) are unfinished. The former alternates poems with prose explanations but only four of the proposed 14 sections are complete. The latter discusses the origin and growth of languages and the use of the vernacular in poetry; it looks forward to issues raised in the questione della lingua. Among other works are De monarchia (On World Government), a treatise of doubtful date presenting Dante’s argument for a temporal power centered in Rome, and Canzoniere, poems inspired by Beatrice but excluded from Vita Nuova. Dante also wrote a number of other miscellaneous poems and several Latin epistles.
Danti, Vincenzo
(1530-1576) Italian goldsmith and sculptor
His earliest sculpture is a monumental bronze figure, Pope Julius III Enthroned, outside the cathedral (1553-56) of his native Perugia. From 1557 until 1573 Danti worked as a court sculptor to Duke Cosimo I in Florence. His masterpiece there was a bronze group on the baptistery, the Beheading of St. John the Baptist (1571): these and all his other figures are gracefully elongated and set in balletic poses characteristic of mannerist sculpture (see mannerism). For the Medici he cast in bronze a large narrative relief of Moses and the Brazen Serpent for the altar frontal of a chapel and a cupboard door (1561), both now in the Bargello, as well as a statuette of Venus Anadyomene for the Studiolo of Francesco I in the Palazzo Vecchio (c. 1573). Danti also carved marble statuary during the 1560s (e.g.
Honor triumphant over Falsehood and Duke Cosimo I, both in the Bargello). He published in 1567 a treatise on proportion, the Primo libro del trattato delle perfette propor-tioni, and retired after 1573 to Perugia, where he was appointed public architect and was a founder member of the Accademia del Disegno. Danti’s sculpture has a delicacy of detail and an elegance of line reminiscent of other goldsmiths-turned-sculptor, such as ghiberti and cellini.
Danube School
The collective name given various 16th-century artists working in the region of the River Danube in southern Germany and Austria. Although links can be established between particular individuals, the artists never functioned as a group, and opinions differ widely on exactly which artists should be accounted members. The unifying theme of their work, however, is love of landscape for its own sake; the Danube artists can be seen to have introduced landscape painting into German art. The painters usually seen as having developed the Danube style are Lucas cranach in his early years, Jorg Breu (c. 1475-1537), and Rueland Frueauf the Younger, all of whom probably visited Vienna during the first five years of the 16th century. The workshop of Jorg Kolderer, court painter to Emperor Maximilian I, may have provided a focus here. Albrecht altdorfer is generally considered the outstanding representative of the Danube style, which was continued by Wolfgang huber and many other minor figures. It is usually taken to apply to painters, but sculptors, architects, and other artists were also influenced by it.
Danzig (Polish Gdansk)
A city and port at the mouth of the River Vistula on the Baltic Sea, now in north Poland. First mentioned as a Polish city in the late 10th century, Danzig gained municipal self-government (1260) and became an important Hanse town (see hanseatic league) and trading center by the end of the Middle Ages. After its long occupation by the teutonic knights (1308-1466), Danzig was regained by King Casimir IV of Poland. Under Polish rule in the 15th and 16th centuries Danzig became the most prosperous Baltic port, exporting grain and timber and developing a successful shipbuilding industry; its first warship was launched in 1572. In 1520 Danzig was involved in the Polish Teutonic war. In 1525 King Sigis-mund I of Poland intervened to crush the artisans who had seized church property and proclaimed the city’s adherence to luther.
Datini, Francesco di Marco ("the Merchant of Prato")
(c. 1335-1410) Italian merchant
From his home town of Prato, near Florence, Datini built up a trading empire in northern Italy, Avignon, Aragon, and Majorca. After 1378 he settled in Florence, joined the silk guild there, and used his surplus wealth to embark on banking. His letters and account books have survived, af fording an unparalleled insight into the life and values of a wealthy bourgeois in 14th-century Italy.
Daucher, Hans
(c. 1485-1538) German sculptor Active in Augsburg, Hans was the son of the sculptor Adolf Daucher (c. 1460/65-1523/24) and executed a number of works for Emperor Charles V and the dukes of Wurttemberg. Noted for his small decorative bronze figures, he also produced the influential group of Christ with the Virgin and St. John for the altar of the Fugger Chapel in Augsburg.
Daurat, Jean
(Jean Dorat, Jean Dinemand) (1508-1588) French humanist scholar and poet
Daurat was born at Limoges. As principal of the College de Coqueret from 1547, he numbered among his pupils baif, ronsard, belleau, and other members of the group that became known as the pleiade, to whom he communicated his love of classical literature. His work on the texts of the Greek dramatists, whom he also translated, his lectures on Homer, and his study of Pindar and later Greek poets ensured his place in the history of scholarship. In 1555 Daurat became tutor to the children of Henry II; from 1556 until his retirement in 1567 he held the chair of Greek at the College de France. Daurat wrote prolifically in Greek and Latin throughout his academic career, publishing (under his Latin sobriquet "Auratus") a collection of his poetry, Poemata, in 1586. He did not, however, excel as a writer of French verse.
David, Gerard
(active 1484-1523) Netherlands painter He was born at Oudewater, near Gouda, and in 1484 entered the Bruges painters’ guild, of which he became dean in 1501. He was admitted to the Antwerp guild in 1515, but had returned to Bruges by 1519. Few of David’s works are documented, but a large group of paintings is attributed to him. His early work, such as the London Christ Nailed to the Cross, has a brutal realism related to Hugo van der goes’s work and the Dutch tradition. In the Bruges Justice of Cambyses diptych (1498) the flaying alive of the unjust judge is depicted with an excruciating objectivity. The slightly later altar shutter of Canon Bernardinus de Salviatis and Three Saints (London) reveals a perceptive study of the work of Jan van eyck. A high point in David’s art is reached with the strikingly monumental Bruges triptych of The Baptism of Christ (c. 1509). Later artists, including metsys and gossaert, began by following David’s precepts before discovering a new formal vocabulary in Italian art.
Davis, John (John Davys)
(c. 1550-1605) English navigator
A Devon man, like many of the other great Elizabethan sailors, Davis made three voyages in search of the northwest passage in 1585, 1586, and 1587, sailing north up the west coast of Greenland; the strait between that coast and Baffin Island was named for him. Although he was unable to advance the search for a passage westward, his experiences led him to believe that such a route was possible, as he declared in his Worldes Hydro graphical Description (1595). Following a trip to the Azores (1590), in 1591 he took command of a ship in the fleet of the circumnavigator Thomas cavendish, but became separated from him in the Straits of Magellan, and sighted the Falkland Islands in August 1592. Davis’s short practical guide for sailors, The Seamans Secrets (1594), introduces his invention of the backstaff as an aid to navigation. Later voyages (1598, 1600-03, 1604) took him to the East Indies. He was killed in an attack on his ship by Japanese pirates off Bintan Island, near Singapore.
De Bry family
A family of engravers including Theodor (1528-98), a refugee from Liege, and his sons Johann Theodor (1561-1623) and Johann Israel (fl. 1570-1611). Frankfurt, a center for the production and sale of illustrated books, was their home from 1590, though Theodor worked in England in the late 1580s. All three worked on the Collectiones peregrinationum… (Grands et petits voyages), which was begun in 1590. After the death of Johann Theodor his son-in-law Matthaus Merian (1593-1650) of Basle, a member of another family of engravers, took over and finished the book in 1634. The 1590 part includes a section on America, with several pictures based on drawings by John White, an official artist with Raleigh’s expedition to Virginia in 1585. Johann Theodor de Bry also produced a Florilegium novum in 1611, one of the most famous flower-books of the period. The de Brys’ engravings set new standards in the quality of book illustration.
Decameron
The collection of stories written by boccaccio between about 1348 and 1353 and related in the fictional framework of a court set up for 10 days (hence the title) in the Tuscan countryside by 10 young people fleeing from the plague in Florence. The 100 stories (one per day from each of the seven ladies and three youths) range in tone from the most exalted and refined to the pornographic and comprise the first great masterpiece of Italian prose. Pietro bembo later proposed it as the ultimate model for prose writing in the vernacular. The Decameron also contains some of Boccaccio’s greatest lyric poetry in the canzone with which each day ends. The work’s influence throughout Europe is incalculable, with stories like that of patient Griselda, the archetypal submissive wife, being retold in many different forms in several languages.
However, despite the popularity of stories from the Decameron, many of which were familiar in various forms to English readers from the 14th century, the first full-scale translation of the work into English was not published until 1620. This anonymous version has sometimes been ascribed to John florio. John Payne’s 1886 translation is available in an edition revised and annotated by C. S. Singleton (Berkeley, Calif., 3 vols, 1982). In the 20th century the translation by Richard Aldington (New York, 1930) enjoyed a number of reprints. The Penguin Classics version (Harmondsworth, U.K., 1972) is by G. H. McWilliam, and the World’s Classics version (Oxford, U.K., 1990) by Guido Waldman.
Dedekind, Friedrich
(c. 1525-1598) German satirist Born in Hannover, Dedekind became a Protestant pastor. While a student at Wittenberg he wrote Grobianus sive de morum simplicitate libri duo (1549), one of the famous satires of the age. A book of anecdotes in Latin verse, which owes much to brant’s Narrenschyff, it lampoons boorish, selfish behavior (particularly table manners) by ironically praising it. The book went into 20 editions in the 16 th century, with others in the 17 th. Freely translated into German in 1551, it was even more popular in this form. Dedekind’s later works—two German plays and some Latin verse—are less noteworthy.
De Dominis, Marc Antonio
(1566-1624) Dalmatian churchman
A brilliant student and teacher and member of the Jesuits, de Dominis left the order in 1596 and six years later became archbishop of Spalato. Siding with the Venetians in their protests against papal claims and eventually repudiating the pope’s authority, he was obliged to relinquish his archbishopric (1616) and flee to England. He was warmly received by James I and made dean of Windsor and master of Savoy (1617) and the same year began publication of his classic indictment of Rome, De republica ecclesias-tica. Personal conflicts and political considerations led to his departure from England and attempted reconciliation with Rome in 1622 by means of a vehement attack on the Anglican Church (1623). He died in Rome, a captive of the Inquisition.
Dee, John
(1527-1608) English mathematician, antiquary, and magus
The son of a London gentleman, Dee was educated at Cambridge and Louvain. He led an extremely varied life, traveling widely throughout Europe, and moving easily from mathematics to antiquarianism, and from commercial activity to occultism. In this last field Dee was to be found in 1586 in Prague with the medium Edward Kelley conjuring up spirits and supposedly conversing with them. More practically, Dee advised the Muscovy Company on the possibility of a northeast passage to China and on the development of improved navigational instruments. As well as being the author of such hermetic texts as his Monas hieroglyphica (1564), he also contributed a famous Preface (1570) to the first English translation of Euclid, in which he argued eloquently for the need for technically trained workers to develop England’s trade and industry. At his Mortlake home Dee had assembled one of the finest libraries in England. It was sufficiently impressive to attract visits from elizabeth i in 1575 and 1580, but in 1583 it was partially destroyed by a mob on account of Dee’s reputation as a wizard.
Defenestration of Prague (1419)
The incident that marked the beginning of the hussite revolution in Bohemia. Popular support for Jan huss expressed after his execution (1415) prompted King Wenceslas to impose upon Prague a town council of reactionary German merchants. Their persecution of leading Bohemian reformers led to a rising by the Prague mob, which culminated in the magistrates being hurled out of the windows of the town hall and impaled on pikes held by the mob below. Less than three weeks later (August 16, 1419) Wenceslas died of a stroke, and the Hussite wars began in earnest.
Defenestration of Prague (1618)
The incident that sparked off the Thirty Years’ War between rival dynastic and religious interests in central Europe. When Ferdinand (1578-1637), Archduke of Styria, was elected king of Bohemia (1617) and chosen to succeed Matthias as emperor, the Bohemian Protestants feared for their religious and civil freedom. In May 1618, invading the Hradschin Palace, Prague, they broke up a meeting of the imperial commissioners by throwing two Catholic councilors and their secretary out of the window.
Della Casa, Giovanni
(1503-1556) Italian churchman, diplomat, and writer
Belonging to a prominent Florentine family, Della Casa was probably born at Mugello and he studied literature and law at Bologna and Greek at Padua before going to Rome in 1532. He followed an administrative and diplomatic career in the Church, becoming archbishop of Ben-evento and papal nuncio to Venice in 1544. During the pontificate of Julius III he withdrew to Venice and devoted himself to writing (1551-55). He was recalled by Pope Paul IV and made Vatican secretary of state a year before his death. The Petrarchan poems collected in Rime (1558) were much admired by contemporaries, but he is chiefly remembered for the influential prose work Il Galateo (1558), in which an older gentleman advises a younger on manners and conduct and tells stories to make moral points. It is indebted both to Boccaccio’s decameron for an informal un-Ciceronian style and to Castiglione’s courtier for its ideals of behavior. Il Galateo was one of the most frequently translated texts in Europe during the second half of the 16th century. Robert Peterson translated it into English in 1576 under the title A Treatise of the Maners and Behaviours; a facsimile of this edition was produced at Amsterdam in 1969. For a modern translation see Galateo, or the Book of Manners by R. S. Pine-Coffin (Harmondsworth, U.K., 1958).
Della Porta, Giacomo
(c. 1537-1602) Italian architect Born in Rome, della Porta trained under michelangelo and was later influenced by Giacomo da vignola, developing a style based upon academic mannerism. He is best known for completing works by Michelangelo, including the Palazzo dei Conservatori on the Capitol and, most notably, the dome of St. Peter’s basilica (1586-90), to the designs for which he and Domenico fontana made a number of alterations. Sometime after 1572 della Porta completed the facade for Vignola’s Gesu, the mother church of the Jesuit order, and then incorporated features of Vignola’s design into several of his own churches in Rome, including Sta. Maria dei Monti (1580-81), Sant’ Atanasio (1580-83), and Sant’ Andrea della Valle (1591).
Della Porta, Giambattista
(c. 1535-1615) Italian natural philosopher, cryptographer, and dramatist
After a period of study and travel throughout Europe, della Porta returned to his native Naples where he published his Magia naturalis (1558; translated as Natural Magick, 1658). An immensely successful work (some 27 editions are known), it distinguished between the magic of sorcery, which della Porta rejected, and natural magic. Under this latter term he included familiar yet mysterious phenomena taken from such fields as magnetism, hydraulics, optics, and chemistry, and sought to explain them in terms of attractions, sympathies, fascinations, and antipathies. The book also contains one of the earliest descriptions of the camera obscura. More original, although less well known, is his De furtivis literarum (On secret writing; 1563), a work of cryptography in which he provided solutions to a number of simple polyalphabetic ciphers. His Phytognomonica (1589) expounds the doctrine of signatures. Della Porta was also a leading figure in two early scientific societies. He helped to establish in Naples in 1560 the academia secretorum naturae, the first such modern society, and in 1610 he became a member of Fed-erico Cesi’s accademia dei lincei in Rome. In addition, from 1589 onwards, della Porta also published some 20 plays in prose and verse, some of which were translated in England and France.
Della Porta, Guglielmo
(c. 1500-1577) Italian sculptor Born in Milan, Guglielmo is first recorded working with other, older members of his sculptor family at Genoa in 1534. In 1537 he went to Rome, where he became the principal sculptor to Pope paul iii. He was appointed to the office of the papal seal (piombatore) upon the death of its holder, the painter sebastiano del piombo (1547), and executed busts of the pope in bronze and marble. He was an admirer of michelangelo, until their dispute over the nature and location of a monument to Paul III in St. Peter’s, of which Michelangelo was architect: this was Guglielmo’s major work and now stands to the left of the high altar, though he had initially hoped that it would stand free under the dome. The bronze seated portrait statue of the deceased pope was a major contribution to a series in St. Peter’s ranging from St. Peter himself, through pollaiuolo’s Pope Innocent VIII, to the baroque figures by Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Alessandri Algardi. The reclining Virtues below recall Michelangelo’s Times of Day in the Medici chapel. Della Porta was a prolific draftsman and also produced many smaller statuettes and reliefs of religious subjects in gold, silver, or bronze.
Della Robbia, Luca
(1399/1400-1482) Italian sculptor Luca della Robbia’s significance as a sculptor in marble and bronze has been overshadowed by the popularity of his and his family’s works in terracotta. The complex steps and secret formulas which Luca invented employed the lead-based glazes already in use by ceramicists to create enameled terracotta sculpture; they became the basis for a family industry in his native Florence, which was continued by his nephew Andrea (1434-1525) and other relatives into the 16th century. Luca was trained as a marble carver, however, and his first important commission was for 10 marble reliefs for an organ loft (known as the Can-toria) for the cathedral of Florence (1431-38; Museo dell’ Opera del Duomo), the classical design of which was probably suggested by brunelleschi. Luca’s figures of singing, dancing, and music-making angels combine naturalism, as seen in the ease of movement and well-observed detail, with idealism, evident in the beauty of the figures and the classically balanced compositions. Luca’s reliefs offer a refined degree of surface finish which is impressive but not, as vasari was the first to point out, completely appropriate for works to be seen from a distance in the relatively dark interior of the cathedral.
More satisfying are Luca’s first large colored terracotta reliefs, the Resurrection and the Assumption of Christ (1442-45, 1446-51), in lunettes above the sacristy doors and near the location of Luca’s and donatello’s pendant Cantorie: the luminous colors and lucid, Renaissance compositions of Luca’s terracottas enhance their readability in the dark interior. Enameled terracotta proved an ideal and relatively economical medium for both interior and exterior architectural decoration, and Luca contributed to a number of important Florentine monuments, including michelozzo’s tabernacle at San Miniato (1448), Brunelleschi’s Capella dei Pazzi (c. 1442-52; Twelve Apostles, St. Andrew, cupola), the Medici palace (c. 1460; Labors of the Months, for the studietto of Piero de’ Medici, now in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London), and a ceiling with Virtues for the chapel of the cardinal prince of Portugal at San Miniato (1461-66). Luca also combined marble reliefs with enameled terracotta, as in the tabernacle (1441-42) now at Peretola and the monument of Bishop Benozzo Federighi (1454-57; now Sta. Trinita). Luca’s blue and white Madonna and Child compositions are among the sweetest and most serene of Quattrocento relief Madonnas; they offer a convincing sense of physical presence in concert with a gentle humanity. He also used enameled terracotta for such free-standing sculptures as Two Kneeling Angels Carrying Candlesticks (1448-51; cathedral, Florence) and a Visitation (before 1445; San Giovanni Fuorcivitas, Pistoia).
Between 1464 and 1469 Luca collaborated with Mich-elozzo and Maso di Bartolommeo in the design and execution of a set of bronze doors with saints for the cathedral sacristy. The Florentine biographer Antonio Manetti (1423-97) included Luca in his Uomini singolari in Firenze (Illustrious men of Florence), crediting him with the innovation of enameled terracotta and praising him for his moral and intellectual qualities.
