German

Made by transferring ink from a carved woodblock onto a sheet of paper, woodcuts were the earliest printed images in the Western world. In the 1400s, woodcuts were printed in black or sometimes dark brown ink (as in the Adoration, on the left), then frequently were hand-colored with thin layers of transparent pigments. While the flat, swiftly applied coloring in the Adoration speaks of rapid production, the carefully colored Crucifixion is more typical of woodcuts that illustrated printed books. Central to Christian symbolism, the blood of Jesus rarely was depicted by black woodcut lines, suggesting that printmakers expected the images to be completed with the addition of color.