General view of Toledo from the southeast quarter

This etching shows the city of Toledo seen from the left bank of the River Tagus. We can make out several of the city’s most iconic landmarks, such as the Alcázar, the cathedral and the monastery of San Juan de los Reyes.
The engravings created for the Monumentos Arquitectónicos de España (1852–1881), including this print, were produced by Calcografía Nacional, while the lithographs were entrusted to private workshops. Every print identifies the author of the drawing which the engraver or lithographer, whose name also appears, later transferred to the matrix. In the case of etchings, the matrix was a steel or copper plate on which lines were incised using acid. These lines were then filled with ink and the matrix was pressed on paper to produce a print.
The aforementioned publication was an important boost for etching in Spain and led to the revival of the state-owned engraving centre Calcografía Nacional. The large, high-quality prints produced for that series are documents of great historical value, as they offer us a snapshot of the condition of the featured monuments in the mid-19th century.