René Sterne's test for The Curse of the 30 Pieces of Silver

In 2003, after Ted Benoit's resignation to continue on the series, several cartoonists applied for drawing Jean Van Hamme's new script, The Thirty Pieces of Silver. René Sterne, who had already offered the editor a test for The Voronov Plot in 1998, was considered by Yves Sente (Lombard's main director and writter of several Blake and Mortimer albums, all drawn by André Juillard) as an ideal artist for the series. Therefore, he wrote a small nscript of 2 pages featuring the series most iconic elements, and handed it in to Sterne, who drew the test and offered it to Dargaud, among with some of its panels coloured by Chantal de Spiegeleer, his wife. This time, the editor was very pleased and the contract signed, though, as you know, Sterne died two years later without having achieved the story's first part. Below you can check out the test's two amazing pages, probably some of the greatest drawings in the whole series, and three coloured panels (thanks to René Sterne's official site and to Strip Spezciaalzaak for the images; click to enlarge):