Greco

The other two, the more detailed fraction of the brook, and the foliage, that takes up the foreground of the canvas. It is not just a 'View of Toledo', although the topographical details are to some extent correct; neither is it 'Toledo at night' or 'Toledo in a storm', other titles which have been attached to the painting: it is simply 'Toledo', but Toledo given a general meaning, a spiritual portrait of the town. The artist is trying to preserve the memory of the once great city during the pinnacle of the Spanish empire. Its long narrow windows with pointed arches span nearly to the top of the tower, while the crockets atop the buttresses, line the soaring spire. In introducing the view into his paintings he acknowledges how much his art owed to the inspiration of the town, until a few years before the great imposing Capital and still the great clerical and artistic center of Spain; the town isolated on the plain of Castile which he had made his new home, so far from the island of his birth. The city walls and barracks seemed to be diffused in the foreground, the small guard towers appear to be placed there without any realistic details. ”

The cathedral seems to be the focus of the painting as it stands in the middleground and to the right. The city skyline is so abstract its almost symbolic, the buildings themselves however have been done with an enormous amount of detail, giving it a very familiar aspect with strong realistic features. El Greco used his skills to create this foreground landscape that shows little detail and realism but still holds naturalism that he used with the cathedral tower. One being, the dark shades in the background with its almost sinister surroundings; a few gray stone colored blurry buildings and a dark just about dead terrain. Some vegetation covers the mountains and the small bridge in the foreground, tall oak-like tress cover some of the buildings and line a few of the roads leading to what appears to be the center of town. The rest of the painting is a landscape of the outer city limits, with a wasteland section sheltered by the gloom of the background storm and a river that flows all the way through the foreground of the painting.

The city was once the cultural and ecclesiastic center of Castile; Years before Madrid became the imperial capital, Toledo had already given Spain its universal meaning by that time.

As is one of the earliest independent landscapes in Western art and one of the most dramatic and individual landscapes ever painted. It seems as though El Greco deliberately forces the viewer to concentrate on the landmarks that define the city, the Alcazar palace and the towering cathedral.