Hieronymus Andreae, or Andreä, or Hieronymus Formschneider, was a German woodblock cutter ("formschneider"), printer, publisher and typographer closely associated with Albrecht Dürer. Andreae's best known achievements include the enormous, 192-block Triumphal Arch woodcut, designed by Dürer for Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor, and his design of the characteristic German "blackletter" Fraktur typeface, on which German typefaces were based for several centuries. He was also significant as a printer of music.
Detail of pinnacle from a hand-coloured impression of the Triumphal Arch woodcut, designed by Dürer and cut by Andreae, 1515-1517. The whole print was 2.95 metres wide and 3.57 metres high (approximately 9'8" by 11'8½"), on 192 large woodblocks.
Woodcut is a relief printing technique in printmaking. An artist carves an image into the surface of a block of wood—typically with gouges—leaving the printing parts level with the surface while removing the non-printing parts. Areas that the artist cuts away carry no ink, while characters or images at surface level carry the ink to produce the print. The block is cut along the wood grain. The surface is covered with ink by rolling over the surface with an ink-covered roller (brayer), leaving ink upon the flat surface but not in the non-printing areas.
The Four Horsemen c. 1496–98 by Albrecht Dürer, depicting the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
Block Cutter at Work woodcut by Jost Amman, 1568
The Crab that played with the sea, Woodcut by Rudyard Kipling illustrating one of his Just So Stories (1902). In mixed white-line (below) and normal woodcut (above).
Madonna del Fuoco (Madonna of the Fire, c. 1425), Cathedral of Forlì, in Italy