Art: Morgan's New Riches

Every kind of art collecting, from medieval ivories to Matisses, is always assumed to have had its golden age, a time when marvelous things were plentiful, and almost cheap. By definition, that age is always gone.

Nowhere does this folk wisdom seem truer than in the field of master drawings. The springs have certainly dwindled. Fifty years ago, the appearance on the auction block of a sheet by one of the great father figures of 15th and 16th century drawing—Dürer, Raphael, Michelangelo, Leonardo—was not uncommon. Today one would hardly be more surprised if...

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