How to Read Paintings: View of Toledo by El Greco
Pulsating, mystical, invigorating
When the artist El Greco captured this view of the Spanish city of Toledo, he painted one of the earliest landscape works in modern Western art.
And it is a remarkable landscape painting too. Through its wild sky and pulsating hills, the image seems to allude to an altered state, something like a dream or hallucination of the city.
What always strikes me about El Greco’s painting style is how he paid particular attention to highlights and shadows, often placing the contrast side-by-side so that an area of darkness can quickly shift to a knife-blade of light.
Sharp contrasts occur constantly across this painting. Darkness and light are pushed up against each other in close proximity. The effect gives rise to the feeling that the whole landscape is being moulded by living energy, as if it could split open and erupt at any moment.
The image is actually an invention in many ways, with some of the buildings having been moved to suit the artist’s vision. El Greco painted the city from the north: such a view would have excluded the cathedral…
