Most days I went out in the morning to see galleries/museums/churches, and then I painted in the afternoon/evening. I began by seeing a lot of de Chirico paintings, including at the de Chirico House Museum, Carlo Bilotti and Galleria Nazionale D’Arte Moderna. Increasingly I also started to realise how much Mannerist painting there is in Rome and I spent quite a lot of time looking at these and reading again about Mannerism using books from the BSR library. I made a whole new body of work, experimenting with a surface preparation I’d never tried before, and I deepened my knowledge and first-hand experience of Mannerist painting.

— Richard Burton