El Greco (Domenikos Theotokopoulos), View of Toledo

View of Toledo

El Greco (1540–1614)

Year
ca. 1599–1600
Medium
Oil on canvas
Seen at
The Met, New York

The only pure landscape in El Greco's surviving work, and one of the strangest in European painting. The city, rearranged for compositional effect, sits beneath a sky that seems to be tearing open. Painted around 1600, it anticipates Expressionism by three centuries — the weather is psychological, not meteorological.