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By foreigners this foreigner was rediscovered. In the 1870s and '80s, when French Impressionists like Manet, Monet, Pissarro and Sisley were experimenting on new methods of painting light and color, travelers began to notice El Greco again. The famous German critic Julius Meier-Graefe went to Spain to write a book praising Velásquez, wrote one in 1910 praising El Greco instead. French Post-Impressionists like Cézanne, abstractionists like Picasso, studied him for ideas. U. S. collectors began paying fabulous prices for his pictures. Because Europe's great museums had not bothered to secure many of his works, Americans were able to buy some 55 authentic (plus scores of spurious) El Grecos.
Today, Greek-born Domenikos Theotokopoulos is the most modern and still the most discussed of old masters. But of El Greco himself little record remains. No authenticated portrait of him exists. The site of his 24-room palace in Toledo is disputed, and where Domenikos Theotokopoulos' bones were buried no one knows.