Spanish Renaissance · c. 1599-1600
View of Toledo
Toledo rises beneath a green-black storm. El Greco rearranged the city to make a portrait of atmosphere rather than a street map.
- Made
- c. 1599-1600
- Style
- Spanish Renaissance
- Collection
- The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
From museum to game table
The in-game crop
The card adds paint spaces, rewards and a frame. This crop shows the artwork area used during play, without the card rails.
The short history
What happened here?
Independent landscapes were rare in Spanish painting around 1600. El Greco made one of the period's most charged examples in the city where he had built his career.
The skyline is recognizable but altered. El Greco shifted buildings to create a stronger rhythm and separated the cathedral from the Alcázar. Light breaks across the ground in irregular patches.
The painting's long history before the nineteenth century is unclear. Modern artists and writers admired its stretched forms and emotional color, which seemed to anticipate Expressionism.
Look closer
Three details worth finding
- 1Pale buildings under a nearly black cloud
- 2The city moved for visual effect
- 3Electric green cutting through the foreground
Sources
Read further
Museum records come first. Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons provide useful public background and image records.