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 INTRODUCTION

OOD-ENGRAVING is the oldest of al the processes of graphic art which aim at yielding impressions, as distinct from the decoration of surfaces with engraved designs, a practice known to Palæolithic man. The discoveries of Sir Aurel Stein have thrown new light upon the antiquity of its use in the East. But even in Western Europe wood-engraving has a history extending over more than five hundred years; in fact, next year we may celebrate, if we please, the quincentenary of the earliest actually dated woodcut, the "St. Christopher" of 1423, now in the John Rylands Library at Manchester. Long before this wood-blocks had been cut for the purpose of printing patterns on textile fabrics, but it was only when paper came into general use, late in the fourteenth century, that the print, as we now understand it, obtained a chance of separate existence. The development of the woodcut, in the earliest specimens of which we recognise the Gothic style of about 1390-1410, out of the printed pattern was followed before very long by the development of line engraving out of ornament engraved by the goldsmith upon vessels of silver, and that of etching out of the armourer's practice of decorating plates of steel by designs bitten in with acid. Of these two processes, the first came into use about 1430-40, and the second quite early in the sixteenth century. Every century contributes its process: the seventeenth, mezzotint; the eighteenth, aquatint and stipple, and quite at its close lithography, which the nineteenth century was to develop in the hands of Goya, Daumier, Manet, Whistler and Forain. But all through the centuries the use of the woodcut persists. I must not say that in all it flourishes, but it shows itself capable, again and again, of a vigorous revival after temporary eclipse and neglect. It has never surpassed in popularity and wide diffusion, and in the high level of excellence attained at the climax of the period, the achievements of the first great age of wood-engraving, which lasted continuously from its first introduction till about 1580. In every Western country, but notably in Germany, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Italy and France, the production of woodcuts, both in the fifteenth and the sixteenth century, was enormous, and a very large proportion of them was of fine quality. Throughout that period separate woodcuts, sometimes of large size, were being sold for a great variety of purposes—as devotional images, portraits, commemorations of historical