El Greco case, Philip's dissatisfaction ended any hopes of royal patronage El Greco may have had. Lacking the favor of the king, El Greco was obliged to remain in Toledo, where he had been received in 1577 as a great painter. According to Hortensio Félix Paravicino, a 17th-century Spanish preacher and poet, "Crete gave him life and the painter's craft, Toledo a better homeland, where through Death he began to achieve eternal life." In 1585, he appears to have hired an assistant, Italian painter Francisco Preboste, and to have established a workshop capable of producing altar frames and statues as well as
Dormition of the Virgin (El Greco) the Greek War of Independence. The icon conforms closely to the established pattern for this subject, which was very common in the Orthodox Church in which El Greco was raised and was influenced by. Nevertheless, it has lost some elements of the traditional Byzantine austerity, adopting traits of the Renaissance engravings. The composition of the "Burial of the Count of Orgaz" has been closely related to the Byzantine iconography of the Dormition of the Theotokos. The examples that have been used to support this point of view have a close relationship with the icon of the "Dormition" by El Greco