Olisippo. Lisabona.

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Original antique copper engraving. General view from a half bird's eye view of the Portuguese city of Lisbon. Michael Wening (born July 11, 1645 in Nuremberg; † April 18, 1718 in Munich) was court engraver for Elector Ferdinand Maria of Bavaria and his successor, Elector Max Emanuel. Wening's main work, Historico-Topographica Descriptio, shows 846 topographical views of Bavaria and is considered the most comprehensive description of the region in early modern Europe. Michael Wening was born in Nuremberg in 1645 as the son of the pig butcher Balthasar Wening and his wife Katharina. There he learned the craft of engraving. There is evidence of his stay in Munich since 1669, after he moved there from his hometown in 1668. In Munich, Wening converted from Protestantism to the Catholic Church. In 1671 he received permanent residency with Munich citizenship and married Anna Maria Mörl on January 27, 1671. At around the same time he found an irregular job at court, where as Fourier he was responsible for organizing trips and receptions. In the years that followed, Wening worked for various clients - including small orders. After he increasingly received orders as an engraver, he was appointed court engraver in 1675. Towards the end of the 1670s, Wening ran his own publishing house, where he successfully published illustrated calendars for over ten years. A series of copper engravings that he published in 1680 on the occasion of Elector Max Emanuel's 18th birthday and his assumption of power aroused his interest and led to the artist's success. In the same year, Wening was awarded the court office of an electoral "knight's room porter". During the Turkish Wars, the engraver documented Elector Max Emanuel's war successes. During this time, Wening created many battle depictions from the Turkish Wars for Elector Max Emanuel, which are still valued by historians today because they illustrate the events of that time. At the beginning of 1696, Wening suggested to his elector that he publish a topographical work with views and descriptions of all the cities, monasteries and castles in Bavaria. The models were works such as the Topographia Germaniae by Matthäus Merian, the Austrian topographies by Georg Matthäus Vischer and the never-printed preliminary work on the Latin topography of Bavaria by Philipp Apian. (Wikipedia)