Deschler was a medalist, sculptor and gem-engraver. His place of birth is unknown, but he married in Nuremberg in 1532 and he acquired citizenship in 1537. He lived in the city until the late 1550s, with a period of two years in Italy around 1547, principally in Venice and Rome. He made many visits to Vienna, where he was appointed court sculptor in 1566, and where he eventually died. He also worked for the courts of Saxony and the Palatinate.
One hundred and fifteen medals are attributed to him, dating between 1533 and 1570 and based principally on stone models. The medals depict patricians of both Nuremberg and Augsburg and members of the imperial family and courts.
His sculptures may include an alabaster bust of Ottheinrich, count Palatine, now in the Louvre,[1] and a lost boxwood portrait of Dürer which is recorded in an inventory of 1659 of the Archduke Leopold-Wilhelm of Austria.[2] A cameo portrait of the Emperor Charles V, now in the Kunsthistorisches Museum Vinenna, is ascribed to him in the inventory.[3]
[1] Hanna Gagel, ed., Der Mensch um 1500: Werke aus Kirchen und Kunstkammern [exh. cat., Staatliche Museen] (Berlin, 1977), 42, fig. 21; Smith (1994, 352-353, fig. 313) gives the work to Dietrich Schro.
[2] Habich 1929, 221.
[3] Erst Kris, Die Kameen im Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien (Vienna, 1927), no. 406; Smith 1994.
[Published in: John Graham Pollard. Renaissance Medals. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. 2 vols. Washington, 2007]