The Immaculate Conception (El Greco, Toledo) in his artistic career; between the years of 1581 and 1585. As such, the demand for devotional works by El Greco’s patrons escalated rapidly. His customers were able to choose from a few samples, often smaller versions of his works, which he would then alter to suit their preferences. El Greco later became the master of a workshop which dealt with the creation of architectural or framing devices for cathedrals. These years of 1597 - 1607 were a profitable decade for him and his workshop, yielding several commissions and outputs. Despite staying in Toledo, this granted El Greco significant projects
El Greco and Paul Lefort helped to promote a widespread revival of interest in his painting. In the 1890s, Spanish painters living in Paris adopted him as their guide and mentor. However, in the popular English-speaking imagination he remained the man who "painted horrors in the Escorial" in the words of Ephraim Chambers' "Cyclopaedia" in 1899. In 1908, Spanish art historian Manuel Bartolomé Cossío published the first comprehensive catalogue of El Greco's works; in this book El Greco was presented as the founder of the Spanish School. The same year Julius Meier-Graefe, a scholar of French Impressionism, traveled in Spain, expecting to