El Grecos Toledo
High
atop a hill of granite, surrounded
by the gorge and river Tagus sits the ancient
and formidable gothic Cathedral
and Moorish palace, Alcazar, of Toledo, Spain.
Toledo's skyline has
changed little since El Greco immortalized Spain's
religious centre in
1597-9(Cardillac 28). El Greco's natural talents, his
"schooling," and the
flare of his adopted Spain, combined to produce
an artistic genius. El
Greco's ability to convey manneristic images that were so
original in
conception and color that the detail gives a miraculous conception
of
cohesion to the whole work(Wethey 61). When studying this canvas,
however,
one must examine the passionate, moonlit sky; the artistic license
El Greco took
in the placement of the city's salient landmarks; and what
these liberties
connote within the context of his time(Brown 244). View of
Toledo is one of the
earliest landscapes in Western Art; in addition, it is
El Greco's only true
landscape and the first in Spanish Art (Legendre 13). It
is a romantic, yet
stark dramatic view of his beloved city. Toledo was the
centre of the secular
and ecclesiastical Spanish world. El Greco was a deeply
pious man and formed an
instant affection for the city(joslyn.org). Of El
Greco's two surviving
landscapes, View of Toledo is essentially as mystical
in composition as his
religious canvases (Wethey 63). The painting seems to
anticipate the
impressionist movement 250 years away. Historically, the
striking use of such
rich tones of violet, azure, and emerald were
dramatically different from the
realist conception of nature. In fact, one
could argue that El Greco mimicked
the "almost psychedelic hues" from
Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel(Web
Museum). Today, these bold color
schemes lose much of their impact; however,
historically, they were a
watershed in painting(Acton 82). The idea behind this
landscape of Toledo was
to announce the city's greatness. The painting was
intended to propagate the
cities place among other great Spanish Cities. The
painting itself is not a
true topographical representation of Toledo(Wethey 64).
El Greco took
some liberty in his placement of the dominant structures. In
reality, the
belfry of the cathedral would be far to the right and beyond the
paintings
field of view. Furthermore, he has distorted the steepness of the
alcazar's
hill and the river Tagus has moved to the right of it's actual
location(Brown
244). Past the ancient Roman bridge Alcantara, three mysterious
buildings
rest in a patch of cloud like white. These three buildings
baffle
contemporary critics and writers; however, recently it has been
proposed that
the buildings were symbolic of St. Ildefonso's monastic
retreats. Writers have
accepted this based on a description from the
biography of the saint by Pedro
Salazar de Mendoza, who was a patron and
friend of El Greco's. The saint's
monastery, according to Mendoza was
situated in a field along side a hill on the
north part of the city. In its
random reorganization of the historic monuments
both past and present: "El
Greco's picture clearly falls more within the
tradition of the emblematic
city view than within that represented by the
objective panorama of van der
Wyngaerde"(Brown 244). In short, El Greco
transformed Toledo's landscape into
an historic interpretation of the city.
Whereas this work is such a
unique landscape, naturally, it is highly
expository. There have been
numerous attempts at deciphering the work's
evocative moods: "Davies, who
calls the picture a ‘hymn to the forces of
nature,' relates it to
contemporary spiritual literature" (Brown 32).
Clearly, the same
landscape is visible in so many of El Greco's other works,
works that
propagated the Faith in Spain's counter reformation. Therefore, one
cannot
justly state that this composition's mood is unique to this
painting.
Rather, the composition's brooding quality is inherent in all
of his works from
the era, for example, St. Joseph with Christ Child and
Laconoon (MediaHistory).
The composition lives with a peculiar mysticism
which comes as a nervous
exaltation from a dreamlike vision. That in and of
itself is mysticism: a
direct, intense relationship to God. It was only
because of the ‘mystic
fervour' of Spanish Catholicism that "mannerism lost
much of its character
of an art for connoisseurs"(Gombrich 274). Naturally,
while the mystiscm
was so obvious in his religious works, this view of Toledo
takes on that same
quality as well. Hence, the misclassification of this
painting as being
"Toledo in a Storm." Rather, it is an intensely passionate
portrait of
his beloved home(Wethey 61). This landscape was very unusual for
both El Greco
and Spanish art. Typically, they depicted religious scenes from
the new and old
testaments. View of Toledo, would appear to be anything but.
Symbolically,
however, the painting too is a religious work. The religious
imagery is replaced
by the structures of the city. The Alcazar represents
Christ. The beautiful
white light cuts across the building's facade
illuminating it. El Greco used
this technique similarly in his Agony in the
Garden. While this imagery is
powerful, one cannot help to wonder why the
city is placed so far to the right
and off centre of the canvas. More than
anything, however, El Greco learned from
his Venetian and Roman years the
importance and enchantment of color. The rich
green turbidity of the earth
reflects El Greco's attempt at achieving
reality(joslyn.org). Of course,
though, this reality was achieved with a certain
degree of artistic
interpretation. The Castellón plain which surrounds Toledo
is barren and clay
red (Legendre 23). The above interpretation aside, it would
seem that the
more powerful and truer meaning lays in the rolling hills and the
wonderfully
swollen clouds. The viewer feels the wind whipping across the plain
of
Castile hitting him squarely in the face as he looks across the river
Tagus
at the mysterious city above. The clouds ominous and omnipresent
dominant your
mood. There is a sense of fright as you watch the
clouds(WebMuseum). Indeed, the
clouds and the natural world are only
extensions of God's will. A theme which
dominates throughout El Greco's
catalogue of The remarkably intimate mood of El
Greco's genre is the
essential reason "for the inability of others to
follow him" (Wethey 49).
Moreover, his art embodies the end of an age at
the time when a new era was
emerging: Galileo studied the heavens with his
telescope, Jean Beguin became
the first published Chemist, the Globe Theater
preformed A Winter's
Tale(MediaHistory).