The Adoration of the Magi (after Filippino Lippi) by Cristofano Robetta (1462-1534). A rare early impression c.1502-30, 297 x 277mm, sold for £5800 at Forum Auctions in July 2016. By way of comparison, an excellent but later impression of the same image went unsold at £1000-1500 at an equivalent sale in November.
A millennia after the technology was first used in China, the earliest printed images in Europe were created in the 14th century. Simple woodcuts intended for private devotion, they served as cheap substitutes for book illuminations. Few survive today.
Woodcuts are relief prints. The technique of engraving on a metal plate (an intaglio print) emerged some decades later in the gold and silversmithing workshops of Italy and Northern Europe. Both Martin Schongauer (c.1448-91), the earliest Northern engraver known to us by name, and the towering genius of Albrecht Dürer, were the sons of goldsmiths.