Gessner, Salomon, Swiss poet and artist, born at Zurich; served an apprenticeship to a bookseller in Berlin, and after a sojourn in Hamburg returned to Zurich, where the rest of his life was spent; he published several volumes of poetry, chiefly pastoral and of no great value; his “Death of Abel” is his most notable performance; his paintings are mainly landscapes of a conventional type, several of which he engraved, revealing better abilities as an engraver than as an artist (1730‒1788).
Definition taken from The Nuttall Encyclopædia, edited by the Reverend James Wood (1907)
Gessler, Albrecht * Gesta Romanorum