It is assumed that he received his artistic training in Crete, possibly at the Monastery of Saint Catherine, the most prestigious painting school on the island. Monasteries were the the only places of learning on the island, and Crete was still medieval in its culture, ignorant of the Italian Renaissance. The kind of Byzantine art practiced some two hundred years before still flourished in Crete, and those images had a huge impact on the artist.
The earliest document concerning El Greco is dated 1570, and refers to him as a pupil of Titian. The artist had made for Venice, which at the time was a new home for thousands of Greeks from Venetian territories, of which Crete was one. He became "The Greek" or El Greco. During this period, Venetian painting was at its zenith, with Titian, Tintoretto, and Paolo Veronese, all working in the city. Titian was in his 80's when El Greco entered his studio. He assisted Titian on his Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence, the great masterpiece of Titian's final years.
In 1570, he moved from Venice to Rome. Guilio Clovio, a Greek from Croatia, introduced El Greco to Cardinal Alessandro Farenese, whose portrait El Greco painted. Almost all of his paintings made in Italy were small in scale and many of them were miniatures .
In 1577, he moved to Toledo, Spain, where he was commissioned to design the retable of the main chapel of Santo Domingo el Antiguo. And, although there is no record of the artist's marrying, he had a son, Jorge Manuel, in 1578. In 1579, the artist became involved in a legal dispute over his wages for his work on the Santo Domingo Cathedral; he wanted 900 ducados for his efforts, which was considered outrageous. The final sum settled on was 320 ducados.
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