The first or almost the first book printed by Aldus was the Hero and Leander of Musaeus of 1494 in small 4to. The Virgil of 1501 was followed rapidly by a Juvenal and a Martial, issued in the same year.
Chinese wood engravings of considerably earlier date do exist.
See page 1373; this remarkable manuscript was then (in 1873) priced at £650.
Early wood-cuts were not cut on the cross ends of the grain, but on the "plank side" of a wooden board.
The Cantica Canticorum of about 1435 has most lovely designs, and the Apocalypse, the Ars Moriendi, the Speculum Humanae Salvationis, and the Biblia Pauperum all have wood-cut illustrations of great vigour and spirit, produced between about 1420 and 1450.