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

"View of Toledo" - 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 XVI century in European art, the landscape was not considered an independent genre. The image of nature was only a background. "View of Toledo" was also considered for a long time a sketch or part of another canvas by El Greco, but in the end the researchers decided that this is an independent work.

about the author

El Greco was a Greek by birth (hence the nickname), a native of Crete. He worked at the turn of the 16th-17th 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 - "Annunciation", "Christ Healing the Blind". At age 26, El Greco leaves Crete and travels first to Italy, and then to Spain, to serve King Philip II.

The master's style took shape quite early. Despite the fact that El Greco studied painting in the studio of Titian, his writing technique is unique for his time. His work is attributed to the best examples of Spanish baroque. Despite the popularity, during his lifetime the artist had no followers and imitators.

The canvas "The Burial of Count Orgas" quickly brought to the artist fame. He became a successful court painter and until the end of his life he worked on portraits and state orders. In Spain, El Greco lived and died in Toledo. This city he depicted on one of his very small landscapes.

Artistic analysis of the painting

Under the thunderous sky on the canvas are built urban buildings. The artist here is quite free to treat in kind. He partially displaced the location of the buildings, some speculated. In the foreground is the bridge of Alcantra. On the hill rise the palace of the Alcázar and the Toledo Cathedral. In fact, in life the bell tower of the cathedral is hidden behind the castle, but the artist pushed it out from beyond the wall. On the left you can see the castle of San Servando. You can not talk about the photographic accuracy of the landscape, but it was named after the "spiritual portrait of Toledo."

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

History of the painting

The canvas "View of Toledo" was hardly written to order, rather it can be attributed to one of the experiments of the master. Until the end of the XVII century the painting was in the collection of the Spanish counts de Acover. In the XVIII and XIX centuries, most likely, was kept in the Augustinian monastery. In 1907 it was acquired by a French collector Durand-Ruelle, and later transferred to an American Hevemeier. In the end, along with the rest of his collection, "View of Toledo" came to the New York Metropolitan Museum.