El Greco El Greco officially complained about this event. A few months later, on 18 September 1572, he paid his dues to the Guild of Saint Luke in Rome as a miniature painter. At the end of that year, El Greco opened his own workshop and hired as assistants the painters Lattanzio Bonastri de Lucignano and Francisco Preboste. In 1577, El Greco migrated to Madrid, then to Toledo, where he produced his mature works. At the time, Toledo was the religious capital of Spain and a populous city with "an illustrious past, a prosperous present and an uncertain future". In Rome, El
Dormition of the Virgin (El Greco) a significant advance in the understanding of El Greco's formation and early career. The painting combines post-Byzantine and Italian mannerist stylistic and iconographic elements. El Greco is now seen as an artist with a formative training on Crete; a series of works illuminate the style of early El Greco, some painted while he was still in Crete, some from his period in Venice, and some from his subsequent stay in Rome. The icon, which retains its function as an object of veneration in the Church of the Dormition of the Virgin in Syros, was probably brought to the island during