Joseph Mallord William Turner

Standing at the junction of the Lahn and Rhine Rivers at Lahnstein, Turner records a detailed view of the village of Kapellen overlooked by the magnificent Castle Stolzenfels. Completed in 1259, the Schloss was constructed by the Archbishop of Trier initially to levy tolls on the Rhine and was later expanded to become the residence of the Koblenz office of the Electorate of Trier.1 Following its siege and occupation by Swedish and French troops in the seventeenth century the castle was left in ruin and in 1836 gifted to the Prussian Prince Royal, Friedrich Wilhlem by the city of Koblenz.2 Here Turner captures Stolzenfels in dereliction, a sprawling and crumbling complex. Further down the hill towards Kapellen is the Church of St Menas: a Romanesque church consecrated in 1328 on the site of the tenth-century ‘capella Sewardi’.3 St Menas was rebuilt by the architect Johann Claudius Lassaulx in 1833.4

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