El Greco of Chandax, present day Heraklion) on Crete, El Greco was descended from a prosperous urban family, which had probably been driven out of Chania to Candia after an uprising against the Catholic Venetians between 1526 and 1528. El Greco's father, Geórgios Theotokópoulos (d. 1556), was a merchant and tax collector. Nothing is known about his mother or his first wife, also Greek. El Greco's older brother, Manoússos Theotokópoulos (1531 – 13 December 1604), was a wealthy merchant and spent the last years of his life (1603–1604) in El Greco's Toledo home. El Greco received his initial training as an icon
Art of El Greco "madness". The critic Zacharie Astruc and the scholar Paul Lefort helped to promote a widespread revival of interest in his painting. In the 1890s, Spanish painters then living in Paris adopted him as their guide and mentor. In 1908, art historian Manuel Bartolomé Cossío, who regarded El Greco's style as a response to Spanish mystics, published the first comprehensive catalogue of El Greco's works. In this book, El Greco is described as the founder of the Spanish School and as the conveyor of the Spanish soul. Julius Meier-Graefe, a scholar of French Impressionism, travelled in Spain in 1908 and wrote