Hans Hirtz or Hirtze was a German painter of the late Gothic period, recognized as a major painter by art historians as early as the 16th century.[1] He was active between 1421 and 1463 in Strasbourg and other areas of the Upper Rhine. His years of birth and death are unknown,[2] though a reference to his widow in a document of 1466 shows he died before that date - the document shows that she remarried to the Strasbourg stained-glass artist Peter Hemmel.[3]
He may be identifiable with the painter known as the Master of the Karlsruhe Passion, the notname of an outstanding artist of the Late Gothic Upper Rhenish school.[4] Dated to around 1450, six panels from the Karlsruhe Passion are now in the Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe and one of the deposition of Christ is now in the Wallraf-Richartz-Museum in Cologne.[5]