View and Plan of Toledo facts for kids

Quick facts for kids View and Plan of Toledo
Spanish: Vista y plano de Toledo
Artist	El Greco
Year	1608 (1608)
Medium	oil on canvas
Dimensions	132 cm × 228 cm (52 in × 90 in)
Location	Museum of El Greco, Toledo

View and Plan of Toledo (Spanish: Vista y plano de Toledo, ca. 1608) is a landscape painting by El Greco. The image is notable for its juxtaposition of the view of Toledo with the trompe l'oeil map of the city's streets. In the composition, El Greco also included an allegory of the Tagus River, a scene of the Virgin Mary placing a chasuble on Saint Ildefonsus, and an elevation of the Tavera Hospital floating on a cloud. It was probably originally commissioned by Pedro Salazar de Mendoza [es] and is currently preserved in the El Greco Museum in Toledo, Spain.

Provenance

Portrait of Pedro Salazar de Mendoza, who likely commissioned View and Plan of Toledo

Though it was earlier thought that the painting was possibly commissioned by the city council of Toledo, current consensus is that it was probably commissioned by Pedro Salazar de Mendoza. Pedro Salazar was the administrator of the Tavera Hospital, depicted centrally in the painting, and was also an early collector of maps and city views. The painting appears on a 1629 inventory of Pedro Salazar's estate, along with View of Toledo and several portraits by El Greco. The commission of this painting would have coincided with Pedro Salazar's commission for El Greco's altarpieces in the chapel of the Tavera Hospital. The painting appears on the post-mortem inventory of El Greco's estate in 1614, and an inventory of Jorge Manuel's estate in 1621 indicating that Pedro Salazar did not receive the painting until several years after El Greco's death.

The painting was later owned by the Hospital de Santiago, and then the Convento de San Pedro Mártir and the Monasterio de San Juan de los Reyes. It entered the collection of the Museo del Greco in 1910.