The history...

I am a nerd. A nerd for Spanish imperialism. I studied a lot of it at Cal Poly, and now that I find myself immersed in it, I've become overwhelmed. I get tired and take cat naps for no apparent reason other than my mind is overanalyzing everything it is taking in. It's pretty awesome. First of all, I took a day trip to Toledo while in Madrid. That is an unbelievable city. It sits atop a hill, completely fortified, like a scene out of a movie. It is surreal. There are guard towers, a moat, insanely planned cobblestone streets, giant libraries, numerous castles within the walls...it's really a lesson out of feudal living. Aside from that, the cathedral there is full of history, corpses, legends, and treasure, including a piece that is said to be made from the very first gold brought back to Spain from the Americas. The artwork was incredible, so incredible in fact, that the people who either commissioned it or created it, are burried with it right there in the church. It was awesome. I also saw one of the most important pieces of artwork I ever learned about, El enterramiento del senor Orgaz, by El Greco. For those of you who don't know el Greco, he was a greek artist living in Toledo who was an insanely devout Catholic. His artwork, like most of that period, circles around portraits of the saints, and his seem to envoke real emotion, especially in the eyes. He utilizes an early form of translucent oil strokes to honestly make it appear as if the eyes are real, or strained, or full of tears. This painting, let's call it THE painting, is full of action, and is one of the prime examples of a "painting within the painting." Or something like that, no seriously, the story behind it though, blew my mind. Studying it I had no idea that Senor Orgaz did exsist and in fact did an incredible amount of good for the church (I think of San Tomas) in Toledo. He was wealthy, but gave all sorts of money, charity, and even decided to tax the people after his death so that the church wouldn't fall, now...that could be bad or good, but they took it as a good thing. That's only half of what he fully accomplished, but as the story goes, when he died it was said two angels came down and placed him in his tomb (I believe the same tomb he still lies in underneath THE painting). They wanted to commemorate him and this miracle, hoping that nobody would forget his efforts, so they asked the young el Greco to paint. THE painting turns out to be this exact scene, of the saints lowering him into his tomb, while everyone looks on, to the audience and the heavens to see what reaction is evoked. It's also, I think, the only self portrait of el Greco at this young age. Anyways, the people, the landscape, the history, the legends, everything about Toledo can be summed up by the idea that behind the legends there are truths. Toledo is that truth behind the fantasy of the middle ages that most of us didn't think existed.