fording an unparalleled insight into the life and values of
a wealthy bourgeois in 14th-century Italy.
Further reading: Iris Origo, The Merchant of Prato:
Francesco di Marco Datini (London: Cape, 1957; new ed.
Boston, Mass: Godine, 2002).
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
Württemberg. Noted for his small decorative bronze fig-
ures, 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 Collège
de Coqueret from 1547, he numbered among his pupils
BAÏF, RONSARD, BELLEAU, and other members of the group
that became known as the PLÉIADE, to whom he com-
municated his love of classical literature. His work on
the texts of the Greek dramatists, whom he also trans-
lated, 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 chil-
dren of Henry II; from 1556 until his retirement in 1567
he held the chair of Greek at the Collège de France.
Daurat wrote prolifically in Greek and Latin through-
out his academic career, publishing (under his Latin so-
briquet “Auratus”) a collection of his poetry, Poemata, in
- 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 en-
tered 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 attrib-
uted 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 trip-
tych of The Baptism of Christ (c. 1509). Later artists, in-
cluding METSYSand 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 NORTH-
WEST PASSAGEin 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 pos-
sible, as he declared in his Worldes Hydrographical De-
scription (1595). Following a trip to the Azores (1590), in
1591 he took command of a ship in the fleet of the cir-
cumnavigator Thomas CAVENDISH, but became separated
from him in the Straits of Magellan, and sighted the Falk-
land Islands in August 1592. Davis’s short practical guide
for sailors, The Seamans Secrets (1594), introduces his in-
vention of the BACKSTAFFas an aid to navigation. Later
voyages (1598, 1600–03, 1604) took him to the East In-
dies. He was killed in an attack on his ship by Japanese pi-
rates off Bintan Island, near Singapore.Davis’s quadrant See BACKSTAFFSde Bry family A family of engravers including Theodor
(1528–98), a refugee from Liège, 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 Matthäus 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 BOCCAC-
CIObetween about 1348 and 1353 and related in the fic-
tional framework of a court set up for 10 days (hence the
title) in the Tuscan countryside by 10 young people flee-
ing 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 porno-
graphic 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 influ-
ence throughout Europe is incalculable, with stories likeDDeeccaammeerroonn 113355