Rare early view of Kempten, Germany by Melchior Lorck, a famous Danish Artist and Engraver.

The following is taken from the British Museum website biography on Lorck:

Danish painter and printmaker, architect, cartographer and diplomat. Born to an aristocratic family in Flensburg in 1526/27, but spent little of his life in Denmark. He was apprenticed to a goldsmith in Lübeck in around 1543, the date of his earliest engravings, two copies after Heinrich Aldegrever (q.v.). He was in Augsburg for the Imperial Diet of 1547-8, and from March 1549 he received an annual stipend for four years to study abroad from Christian III of Denmark (q.v.), but at the end of this time he did not return to the king's service. He was in Nuremberg in about 1549, where he had contact with Hanns Lautensack (1524-1564/65), and again in 1550-1; he also probably went to the Netherlands. In September 1551 he was in Italy, where he visited Venice, Bologna, Florence, Rome and elsewhere. In 1553 he was at Neuburg-an-der-Donau working for Count Palatine Ottheinrich. Thereafter Lorck was sent by the Emperor Ferdinand I from Vienna on an Embassy to Turkey, led by Augier Ghiselin de Busbecq, probably arriving in Constantinople late in 1555. Lorck's autobiography states that he spent three and a half years in Turkey and that he visited Greece. Few drawings done in Turkey have survived, others were done on his return based on earlier sketches. He was in Vienna 1559-60. In January 1563 Frederick II, King of Denmark, sent a gift of money in return for some engravings from Lorck. In the same month Lorck sent portraits to decorate the Duke of Schleswig-Holstein's new castle at Hansborg. He made designs for the triumphal entry into Vienna on 16 March of the Emperor Maximilian II, who then confirmed the nobility of Lorck and his three brothers. In November 1564 Lorck was appointed 'Hartschier' (gentleman of the imperial court) by Maximilian II, a position which he held until 30 June 1579. He lived mostly in Hamburg, throughout the 1570s, and also visited to Antwerp 1573-4 where he became a friend of Abraham Ortelius and Philipp Galle (qq.v.). During the period 1570-83, he worked on designs for the woodcuts for his planned publication on Turkey. He was appointed court painter to Frederick II, of Denmark, on 19 February 1580, but in 1583 the king ceased financial support. Lorck probably died soon after 1583, leaving his book on Turkey unpublished. Payment made to Lorck, along with seventy-three other 'Hartschiers' in the imperial account books of 31 December 1588, refers to an earlier event and provide no evidence that he was alive at the time (see Fischer, vol.1 2009, pp.135-7). A shortened version of the book on Turkey was published in Hamburg in 1626 by Michel Hering (P&D 159.a.11).