View of Toledo

View of Toledo (Spanish: Vista de Toledo, also: View of Toledo or Thunderstorm over Toledo ) is a painting by El Greco. The painter created the landscape paintings in the late 1590s - years, probably from 1597 to 1599. It is executed in oil on canvas and 121.3 cm high and 108.6 inches wide. The image is one of the few landscape paintings that created El Greco. In his later work he occupied himself with his hometown and took such landscape elements into other images. Today, the painting is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

Description

The picture shows the Spanish city of Toledo under a dark stormy sky, on an overgrown with grass and trees hill. In the foreground, the bridge over the Tagus river can be seen. El Greco took where significant to the history of the city and were carried out at this time of urban innovations reference. He painted a view of the eastern part of the city with the palace, the Alcántara Bridge, the Castle of San Servando and the offset to the right bell tower of the Cathedral. So he increased the rise of the acropolis in a dramatic way. He also left out the city wall and changed the picture the river in the foreground. The highest altitude building on the right is the Alcázar, the building below him with the arcade basement corresponds to a degree no real building in Toledo. It was interpreted as a symbolic reference to the many mansions of rich merchants.

Provenance

The view of Toledo remained until his death in possession of El Greco. Then it went on with the estate in possession of his son Jorge Manuel. At least until 1621 remained the painting there. When the picture was sold is not comprehensible. The next owner was Pedro Salazar de Mendoza in Toledo, which owns the painting was in 1629. It was sold in the wake of Pedro Laso de la Vega. It remained in the order in the family and was brought by Pedro Laso de la Vega to Madrid, where it is detectable in a 1639 inventory. The painting was then in Oñate Palace in Madrid in the collection of Condessa de Añover y Castañeda. The date on which came the view of Toledo in this collection is unknown. About the agent Ricardo de Madrazo got the painting in 1907 in the inventory of the art dealer Durand- Ruel in Paris, who sold it in 1909 for 70,000 francs to the New York collector Louisine W. Havemeyer. At her death in 1929, the picture came as a foundation in the Metropolitan Museum of Art