“Ehrenbreitstein” Drawing 1 of 2
Vignette, Ehrenbreitstein Hill and Fortress at Confluence of Rhine and Moselle
Pen and ink, approx. ? × ? cm (image only).The editors of the Library Edition
describe the image as a “sketch of the Rhine with the fortress high on the hill, and the town below”
(Ruskin, Works, 2:355; a facsimile of the page of MS IX containing this drawing and the opening portion of verse is bound opposite p. 355).
Ruskin based his vignette on an engraving, Ehrenbreitstein by Robert Wallis after J. M. W. Turner,
published in the Keepsake for MDCCCXXXIII (p. 84 opp.)
(see Rawlinson, Engraved Work of J. M. W. Turner, 1:225 [no. 328]; and
Hewison, Warrell, and Wildman, Ruskin, Turner, and the Pre‐Raphaelites, 45).
Turnerʼs engraving is not a vignette, but a full‐page, broadside rectangle. In order to reframe the image as a vignette,
Ruskin may have looked for models to Turnerʼs own vignettes in the 1830 edition of
Rogersʼs Italy (the vignette heading the poem
“Como” most resembles the subject). Another possible model is a vignette engraving after David Roberts,
Drachenfels, published in The Pilgrims of the Rhine (1834)
by Edward Bulwer‐Lytton (p. 100). Robertsʼs Rhine view
is suggestive of Turnerʼs Ehrenbreitstein scene, but contained in an oval vignette.
John James Ruskin acquired The Pilgrims of the Rhine in June 1834
(John James Ruskin, Account Book [1827–45], 34v).
For another Turner engraving from this volume of the Keepsake
that Ruskin proposed to adapt as a vignette for the “Account”, but probably never executed, see
“Fall of the Rhine” in List of Proposed Additional Contents for the “Account”.