Laocoön (El Greco) turmoil. The dark, sinister rocks of the foreground add to the intense emotional atmosphere. El Greco places the classical subject against a gloomy view of Toledo. El Greco’s use of Toledo as the backdrop for his depiction of Laocoön’s death may be based on local folklore that the people of Toledo descended from the Trojans. In the painting, the Trojan horse moves towards the city, a reminder of Laocoön’s failed attempt to convince his countrymen of the trap. El Greco portrays the city Toledo as a world of suffering, using color to create a sense of doom. The high horizon
Posthumous fame of El Greco catalogue, and made the comparaisons between El Greco and the French Impressionists. Franz Marc wrote a tribute to Meier-Graefe and Tschudi, because they had offered to Germany "the world of transcendent ideas of a great painter, it were completely ignorant of: El Greco". To the English artist and critic Roger Fry in 1920, El Greco was the archetypal genius who did as he thought best "with complete indifference to what effect the right expression might have on the public". Fry described El Greco as "an old master who is not merely modern, but actually appears a good many steps ahead