[Illustration: 107. WOODEN STATUETTE (HEIGHT 23⅝ IN.) THIRTEENTH CENTURY. ATELIERS DE LA CHAISE DIEU, AUVERGNE] [Illustration: 108. IVORY STATUETTE (HEIGHT 9⅞ IN.) THIRTEENTH CENTURY. SCHOOL OF PARIS] Thus the flora of our own fields was applied in lithic form to the elements of our church architecture. But the breadth proper to architectural sculpture was still preserved by means of ingenious combinations. It was not until the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries that the imitation of natural forms became servile, tedious, and over-minute, and that the beauty of the whole was sacrificed to exaggerated faithfulness of detail.[36] [36] Anthyme St. Paul, _Histoire Monumentale de la France_; Paris, Hachette and Co., 1884. [Illustration: 108A. IVORY STATUETTE (HEIGHT 9½ IN.) FIFTEENTH CENTURY. SCHOOL OF PARIS] It should be noted that the decadence which manifested itself in monumental sculpture was far less rapid in the more intimate art which may be distinguished as _imagery_. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries all sculptors were _image-makers_; but towards the close of the latter, and during the fifteenth, the term was specially applied to carvers of images in wood, ivory, etc. Art still flourished in their ateliers in all its beauty, notably that of the goldsmiths, who carved images in high or low relief in precious metals, and who, thanks to the severely paternal regulations of the _maîtrise_, were enabled to bring French decorative art to the highest degree of perfection. The beautiful carved wooden stalls of Amiens, Auch, and Albi, to name but the most famous, testify to the vigorous talent of the fourteenth and fifteenth-century image-carvers. [Illustration: 109. WOODEN STATUETTE (HEIGHT 10 IN.) FOURTEENTH CENTURY. SCHOOL OF PARIS] [Illustration: 110. IVORY DIPTYCH (HEIGHT 6⅜ IN.) FOURTEENTH CENTURY. SCHOOL OF PARIS] [Illustration: 110A. IVORY DIPTYCH (HEIGHT 2¾ IN.) FOURTEENTH CENTURY. SCHOOL OF THE ILE-DE-FRANCE] [Illustration: 111. IVORY DIPTYCH (HEIGHT 4¾ IN.) FOURTEENTH CENTURY. SCHOOL OF PARIS]