"View of Toledo" by El Greco - one of the first European landscapes

2025 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2025-01-24 17:46

View of Toledo is one of the most famous paintings by the Spanish artist El Greco. The canvas is unique: it is one of the two surviving landscapes of the master. Until the 16th century, landscape was not considered an independent genre in European art. The image of nature was only a background. "View of Toledo" was also long considered a sketch or part of another painting by El Greco, but in the end, the researchers decided that this was an independent work.

About the author

El Greco was of Greek origin (hence the nickname), a native of Crete. He worked at the turn of the XVI-XVII centuries in Spain. At the beginning of his career, the artist studied icon painting, which is very noticeable in his works. At home, he painted the first paintings - "The Annunciation", "Christ Healing the Blind". At 26, El Greco leaves Crete and goes first to Italy and then to Spain, to serve King Philip II.

The style of the master took shape quite early. Despite the fact that El Greco studied painting in the workshop of Titian, his painting technique is unique for his time. His works are considered to be the best examples of the Spanish Baroque. Despite the popularityduring his lifetime, the artist had no followers or imitators.

The painting "The Burial of Count Orgaz" quickly brought fame to the artist. He became a successful court painter and worked on portraits and government commissions until the end of his life. In Spain, El Greco lived and died in Toledo. He depicted this city in one of his extremely few landscapes.

Artistic analysis of the painting

Under a stormy sky, city buildings are spread on the canvas. The artist here is quite free to deal with nature. He partially shifted the location of the buildings, some of them conjectured. In the foreground is the Alcantra Bridge. The Alcazar Palace and Toledo Cathedral rise on the hill. In fact, in life, the bell tower of the cathedral is hidden behind the castle, but the artist pushed it out from behind the wall. On the left you can see the castle of San Servando. It is impossible to speak about the photographic accuracy of the landscape, but the name "spiritual portrait of Toledo" stuck behind it.

The viewer looks at the city from below, this allowed to raise the horizon line and stretch the proportions vertically, which is generally characteristic of El Greco's work. The picture is conditionally divided into two parts: the city and green hills, flooded with fantastic lighting, below and a dramatic stormy sky above. Such a sky and lighting are also found in other paintings by the artist. Bright colors and fantastic lighting enhance the drama of the painting "View of Toledo". El Greco does not document architecture and landscape with the accuracy of a cartographer, but depicts the most characteristic features, his impression of the city.

Historypaintings

The canvas “View of Toledo” was hardly made to order; rather, it can be attributed to one of the master's experiments. Until the end of the 17th century, the painting was in the collection of the Spanish counts de Acover. In the 18th and 19th centuries, most likely, it was kept in the Augustinian monastery. In 1907, it was acquired by the French collector Durand-Ruel, and later passed to the American Havemeyer. Eventually, along with the rest of his collection, View of Toledo ended up in the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art.