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
Art of El Greco "odd". The phrase "sunk in eccentricity", often encountered in such texts, in time became his "madness". With the arrival of Romantic sentiments, El Greco's works were examined anew. To French writer Théophile Gautier, El Greco was the precursor of the European Romantic movement in all its craving for the strange and the extreme. French Romantic writers praised his work for the same "extravagance" and "madness" which had disturbed 18th century commentators. During the operation of the Spanish Museum in Paris, El Greco was admired as the ideal romantic hero and all the romantic stereotypes (the gifted, the misunderstood, the marginal,