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
Healing of the Man Born Blind (El Greco, Parma) Healing of the Man Born Blind (El Greco, Parma) Healing of the Man Born Blind is a c.1573 painting by El Greco, showing the healing the man blind from birth. It is now in the Galleria nazionale di Parma. It is signed at the bottom right-hand corner. It shows the artist returning to a theme he had first painted five years earlier, in a work now in Dresden. In the 17th century it is recorded as being in the Palazzo Farnese in Rome, as shown by a seal on its reverse. It was most probably commissioned directly from the artist