What Survives Before the Paint Does

Long before a Northern Renaissance panel took its finished form, the image began on paper, in a drawing meant only as a step toward something else. Most of those sheets were never built to last, and few did. The ones that survive give collectors of works on paper a rare look at process itself, the hand at work before the composition was ever fixed. It is a corner of the market that rewards patience: what remains is scarce by nature, not by curation. The subject is now the focus of a podcast conversation with Olenka Horbatsch.

With reporting from The Collector.