Renaissance · Europe · Culture

1608

El Greco Paints View of Toledo

1608

The aging Cretan-born painter Domenikos Theotokopoulos, known in Spain as El Greco, produced an almost hallucinatory landscape of the Castilian city beneath a churning green sky. There is no human figure in it. Landscape painting had discovered, centuries ahead of schedule, how to convey inner weather, and the canvas remains one of the most emotionally charged cityscapes ever painted.