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
The Tears of Saint Peter (El Greco, Mexico City) the Museo Soumaya, where it still hangs. The Tears of Saint Peter (El Greco, Mexico City) The Tears of Saint Peter or Penitent Saint Peter is a c.1587-1596 painting by El Greco. It is similar to other works on the same subject by the artist, such as those in the Bowes Museum, the El Greco Museum, the national museum in Stockholm and others. This version seems to have belonged to the marqués de Legarda, who kept it in Vitoria. Electra Havemeyer acquired it in 1909 and then in 1930 by the Florida-based Cuban collector Oscar B. Cintas, who restored it.