Ch. 23 Favorite Works

El Greco, View of Toledo, ca. 1610, oil on canvas

The way the artist painted the scene of Toledo gives me the sense of movement in the image. The color of the clouds and the movement added to them along with the way the trees and bushes are painted give me the feeling of a storm rolling over the city and large gust of wind blowing the the landscape. the detail added to the city is very neat and has nicely depicted lines. There is a broad color pallet in this image from very dark blues and blacks to whites and tans. Overall I enjoyed the way the image made my eye move around the scenery and I could not find one specific spot to rest my eye.


Pieter Bruegel the Elder,  Fall of Icarus, ca. 1555-1556, 2' 5" x 3' 8 1/8",oil on wood transferred to canvas

The first thing that grabbed my attention in this image is the broad range of color. There are a lot of rich blues and greens and the pallet has a full color scale from whites to blacks. I do find it interesting that the image of Icarus doesn't seem to be the main focus of this image. Icarus is a very tiny depiction in the bottom right corner of the image while my eye first focused on the two men in the center of the image. Both of these men seem to just go on about there business with little or no acknowledgement of the boy falling from the sky into the ocean. There is great detail in the images in the foreground while the images in the background seem to be hazy and out of focus much like they would be in real life.