J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

Here Turner has made a slight sketch of the Mäuseturm or Mice Tower, a stone tower located on a small island in the Rhine near the town of Bingen. The building gained its name from a tenth-century folk tale involving Hatto II, the Archbishop of Mainz. Reputedly an oppressive and avaricious ruler who exploited the peasants in his domain and denied them grain during a famine, Hatto was besieged by an army of mice for his sins and eaten alive by the rodents in the tower.1 In 1298 the structure was used as an official customs collection tower for the Castle of Ehrenfels nearby (Tate D28493; Turner Bequest CCXC 72). Centuries later, in 1689, the Mäuseturm was destroyed by French armies; it was rebuilt in 1855 as a Prussian signal tower.2