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) Dormition of the Virgin (El Greco) El Greco painted his Dormition of the Virgin near the end of his Cretan period, probably before 1567. El Greco's signature on the base of the central candelabrum was discovered in 1983. The discovery of the "Dormition" led to the attribution of three other signed works of "Doménicos" to El Greco ("Modena Triptych", "St. Luke Painting the Virgin and Child", and "The Adoration of the Magi") and then to the acceptance as authentic of more works, signed or not (such as "The Passion of Christ (Pietà with Angels)," painted in 1566). This discovery constituted