At what period the art of wood-engraving was first introduced in Europe, or in what country it was first practised, has not been precisely ascertained. Not the slightest allusion is made to its productions by any writers of the fourteenth century; and the earliest authentic date that has hitherto been observed on any wood-engraving, is 1423. A wood-engraving said to contain the date 1418 was indeed discovered at Malines in 1844, pasted in the inside of an old chest; but as the numerals have evidently been repaired by means of a black-lead pencil, both the genuineness and the authenticity of the date have been very justly questioned. The person by whom it was found, the keeper of a little public-house, almost immediately sold it to an architect named De Noter, of whom it was purchased by the Baron de Reiffenberg, for the Royal Library of Brussels, of which he is the conservator, and where it is now preserved.[105]
Before this discovery, the earliest wood-engraving with a date, was the St. Christopher, in Earl Spencer's collection, in which the date 1423, partly in words and partly in numerals--"_Millesimo cccc^o xx^o tercio_"--is seen engraved in the same manner as the other parts of the subject. The first person who published an account of the St. Christopher, was Heineken. When he first saw it, it was pasted on the inside of the cover of a manuscript volume in the library of Buxheim, near Memmingen in Suabia, within fifty miles of Augsburg, a city which appears to have been the abode of wood-engravers almost from the very commencement of the art in Europe, and in which we find a card-maker so early as 1418. On the inside of the cover, Heineken also observed another cut, of the annunciation, of the same size as the St. Christopher, and apparently executed about the same time. The volume within whose covers those cuts were pasted, was bequeathed to the convent by Anna, canoness of Buchaw, who was living in 1427, but who probably died previous to 1435. The Annunciation, as well as the St. Christopher, is now in the possession of Earl Spencer.
From the time of their first introduction, woodcuts of sacred subjects appear to have been known in Suabia and the adjacent districts by the name of _Helgen_ or _Helglein_, a corruption of _Heiligen_, saints; and in course of time this word also came to signify prints or woodcuts generally. It would seem that originally the productions of the wood-engraver were considered as imperfect till they were coloured; and as the St. Christopher, the Annunciation, and others of an early date, appear to have been coloured by means of a stencil, there is reason to conclude that most of the "Helgen" of the same period were coloured in the same manner. In France the same kind of cuts, probably coloured in the same manner, were called "_Dominos_,"--a name which of itself indicates the affinity of the subjects with those of the _Helgen_. Subsequently, the word "Domino" was used to signify coloured or marbled paper generally; and the makers of such paper, as well as the engravers and colourers of woodcuts, were called _Dominotiers_.