At all events we find that in the next year he has obtained permission and money from Philip to undertake the journey, which kept him away from Spain for two years.
There is an amusing page, in doggerel verse, which I remember to have read some years ago.

I trust the translator will pardon the liberty I am taking in quoting it.

It reports a perhaps imaginary conversation between Velasquez and an Italian painter in Rome.

'The Master' in this rhyme is Velasquez.
The Master stiffly bowed his figure tall And said, 'For Raphael, to speak the truth, -- I always was plain-spoken from my youth,-- I cannot say I like his works at all.' 'Well,' said the other, 'if you can run down So great a man, I really cannot see What you can find to like in Italy; To him we all agree to give the crown.' Velasquez answered thus: 'I saw in Venice The true test of the good and beautiful; First, in my judgment, ever stands that school, And Titian first of all Italian men is.' Velasquez in Rome was already a ripening artist, whose vision of the world was quite uncoloured and unshaped by the medieval tradition.
Raphael's pictures with their superhumanly lovely saints, their unworldly feeling, and their supernaturally clear light, doubtless imparted pleasure, but not a sympathetic inspiration.

Tintoret's immense creative power and the colours of Titian's painting which inspired Tintoret's ambition, as we remember--these were the effective influences Velasquez experienced in Italy.