Auction introduction: In a subtly new look at works on paper, this sale highlights, through a carefully selected group of works spanning almost five centuries, the immense variety of techniques, media and styles employed by artists working on paper and other related supports such as vellum, and also sheds light on the many purposes that these drawings, watercolours, gouaches and pastels served. Rounded off by other fine drawings from Italy, Spain and elsewhere, the sale gives a remarkably complete picture of the many uses to which works on paper were put, and the styles and approaches employed by European draughtsmen across the five centuries that took the art of drawing from the late Medieval world to the dawn of modernism.