Asper, Hans

, a Swiss painter, was born 1499, at Zurich, and painted portraits with so much life, nature, and character, that his reputation was little inferior to that of Holbein. His drawings in water-colours, of birds, fishes, dead game, and flowers, though done with great simplicity and freedom, are nearly deceptions. He is said to have furnished the designs for Conrad Gesner’s “Historia Animalium” nor was he ignorant of historic composition. Many of Rodolph Meyer’s etchings for Murer’s ' Helvetia Sancta" were drawn from his originals. To record his merit, a medal was struck, with his head, name, and age, in front and on the reverse, a death’s skull, with a moral sentence in rhyme. That he should have been suffered, after such a pledge of public esteem, to live and die in indigence, is not easily accounted for. He died in 1571. ²