View of Toledo

View of Toledo
Artist El Greco
Year 1596-1600
Medium Oil on canvas
Location Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City
Dimensions 47.8 in × 42.8 in
121.3 cm × 108.6 cm
Famous Paintings by El Greco
The Disrobing of Christ, 1577–1579
Opening of the Fifth Seal, 1608-1614
Dormition of the Virgin, 1565-1566
The Burial of the Count of Orgaz, 1586
View of Toledo, 1596-1600
The Adoration of the Shepherds, 1612–14
Christ Healing the Blind, c. 1570
The Entombment of Christ, c.1570
St. Martin and the Beggar, 1597-1599
Complete Works

The View of Toledo is one of two landscape paintings by El Greco that featured the Spanish city that he had made his home. The painting, which measures 47.8 by 42.8 inches, is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. It is part of the Havemeyer Collection bequeathed to the museum in 1929.

Style and Composition

The painting was made in Baroque or Late Renaissance style. It is unusual in that Spanish artists at the time did not do landscape paintings, so this painting, and another El Greco work, View and Plan of Toledo, are the first landscape paintings in Spanish art.

The painting is not an accurate representation of the city at the time. The perspective of the city is the eastern side as seen from the north. However, the artist wanted to include the cathedral, which would not have been visible from the chosen perspective, so he moved it to the left of the old Moorish Alcazar.