View of Toledo

• Key Facts

  Artist: El Greco

  Year: 1596–1600

  Medium: Oil on canvas

  Movement: Mannerism
• The significance of landscapes in the era of the 16th/17th century


  Landscape paintings were rare among Spanish paintings of the Renaissance and Baroque periods. The Council of Trent's ban against landscape painting lends credence to the idea that this work may stand as the first Spanish landscape painting of its time.
• Colours

  The painting is vibrant with blues, black, white, and vivid greens. It is made up of all earth tones. Most notable is the distinct colour contrast between the darkness of the skies above and the vibrance of green in the hills below.
• Tones

  Tenebrosity/ use of chiaroscuro prominent
•  the poet Rainer Maria Rilke described how “splintered light tills the ground, turning it over..."


  "... tearing into it and bringing up here and there pale green meadows behind the trees standing like insomniacs.”
• The painting portrays Toledo, the city where he lived and worked for most of his life.
• As with El Greco's finest portraits, [the painting's] approach is interpretive rather than documentary: it seeks to portray the essence of the city rather than to record its actual appearance.
• Perspective

  The landscape is shown from the north yet El Greco has included only the easternmost portion, above the Tagus river. This partial view would have excluded the cathedral, which he therefore imaginatively moved to the left of the dominant Alcázar or royal palace.
• Buildings in the painting

  A string of buildings descends a steep hill to the Roman Alcántara bridge, while on the other side of the Tagus is the castle of San Servando. Another cluster of buildings appears on a cloud-like form below the castle.
• Rainer Maria Rilke describing the river and landscape:

  "A narrow river falls, motionless, from the mass of the hills and with its dark, nocturnal blue menaces the green flames of the bushes. "
• Art historian, Walter Liedtke, speculates that...

  El Greco wanted to emphasize the greatness of Toledo. Due to Toledo sitting at the top, it symbolized the city's position being near heaven, yet still at the top of hill making it of earthly possession.
• Using medieval tradition, El Greco incorporated landmarks such as the cathedral and the Alcázar which were positioned in a manner where he could create his version of Toledo, "a city of the spirit"
• Toledo is the highest point it could be without being unnatural or in the sky, almost as if El Greco used the hills to work as a pedestal. It is thought that this painting's enigmatic symbolism could be related to the mysticism that infused the city during the period.
• Katharine Baetjer's interpretation of View of Toledo

  "the painters approach is not comprehensive but selective. In this canvas the spire of the cathedral, which actually lies at the heart of the town, springs from the steep eastern slope - topographical accuracy has been sacrificed for dramatic effect."
• The sublime in this painting

  El Greco combines elements of the real and the fantastic to evoke not only the eerie beauty of the city but also the element of menace inherent in nature.
• The proportions of the buildings have been distorted to accent their vertical thrust.
• Light

  The city is unnaturally illumined by sharp white raking light, whereas the hill is cloaked in a bright acid green.
• The use of intense colour and thick paint gives the impression of a dreamlike vision rather than a realistic representation of the scene.