For me, this image of a Moorish doorway examines humankind’s relationship with conflict — and the ways we beautify the structures of our fears.
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Toledo is a fortified city-palace known as the city of three cultures. Its civilizational history goes back more than 2,000 years. Jewish exiles settled here after the destruction of Jerusalem in the year 70 CE. The city had already been featured in Roman literature by then.
This ancient bastion’s tempestuous past is defined by conflicts that swung Toledo from prehistoric Celtic tribal center to Roman city to Visigoth fortress to the Islamic Conquest of the Iberian Peninsula in the eighth century, to the Christian conquest and modern-day revolutions and wars.
Today this puerta is on the long uphill pedestrian walk that begins on the Puente de Alcántara, a bridge across the Tagus River, and ends in a magnificent palace on top of a hill. The portal is one example of many here illustrating the Moorish architectural style established in Spain during centuries of Arab dominance, and preserved by later monarchs who appreciated its graceful strength and beauty.
When I stood within this door, I realized the thickness of the rampart through which it passes. It is really two doorways — one entering the city wall from the outside, and one leaving the wall into the interior of the citadel. High stone barriers enclose the passageway, green ivy pours down from the azure sky, the sun casts dramatic shadow lines.
I especially liked the composition created by the crisscrossed shadows as well as the double doors (and shadow of a third). The many kinds of stone and masterful masonry create an intricate texture. I enjoyed the challenge to depict them in the uneven shadow cast by the trees out of sight above. As I quickly sketched this scene, a few tourists climbed past me toward the palace. Breezes tussled the ivy and cooled the now-peaceful space within.
This wall, and the fortified city beyond it, are a product of fear and instability — but a beautiful one, worth visiting and contemplating.
“Puerta de Alcantara, Toledo, Spain” is available as a limited-edition serigraph print, framed or unframed, worth collecting.
