Xilography

Xylography is the most ancient relief printing technique, whose matrix is a block of wood.
The woodblock can be cut longitudinally to the trunk as planks or cross-grained when it is cut transversally. The former is softer and creates less accurate marks, while cross-grained matrices, made by putting together different selected pieces, which must be compact and free from veneers and can be engraved with very thin and close lines in order to produce drawings rich in details similar to those obtained through etching.
The drawing on the woodblock is in relief. Upon printing, the parts chiselled with special tools called gouges or burins will result white, while those in relief will be black, since the ink is applied by a roller on the parts in relief.
The first prints on paper, created from engraved wooden matrices, were made in China in the 8th century. In Europe, the first xylographs date back to the end of the 14th and the beginning of the 15th century. These prints, often votive, were mainly linear images adorned with hand colouring. The invention of movable type printing, which applied the principle of relief printing to the letters of the alphabet, and the resulting development of the publishing industry represent a privileged field of application and use for xylographs, since the inking and printing principle is the same. During the last decades of the 15th century, there was a consolidated production of books illustrated with xylographs, especially in Italy and Germany.
All these images, even the more refined ones, were usually anonymous works or only hypothetically identified until, thanks to technical innovations regarding presses and inks developed with the beginning of typography,  A. Dürer, in just a few years, took xylography to a higher level creating far-reaching and complex works.
Other important innovations occurred at the beginning of the 18th century and again at the end of the 19th century with P. Gauguin's woodcuts and engravings that started modern xylography.