Art Painitng

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.