The only room of architectural interest in the interior, which has been largely remodelled to serve the various public uses to which the building has since been put, is the chapel (Plates LVI. and LVII.). Here the side walls have suffered from too ardent restoration; but the splendid painted ceiling is intact. It is divided by ribs, the bosses of which are decorated with the arms of Jacques Coeur and those of his wife, into twelve triangles, four large and eight small ones; and within these triangles, relieved against a background of gold-starred blue, angels bearing ribbons inscribed with scriptural texts are painted. The breadth and beauty of the design, the sobriety and harmony of the color-scheme and the excellence of execution gives this ceiling first importance as a document in the history of French decorative painting. [Illustration: GOTHIC CARVED WOODWORK FIFTEENTH-SIXTEENTH CENTURY _Bavarian National Museum: Munich_] Taken as a whole this house, though rivalled by the Hôtel de Cluny at Paris and the Palais de l'Échiquier at Rouen, ranks as the most splendid civil construction antedating the Renaissance which remains in France. Its history is known without interruption from the beginning. Five years after its confiscation it was restored to Coeur's descendants. In 1501 it was sold by them, passing through several hands, until in 1682 it became the property of the city of Bourges and was made to serve as the Hôtel de Ville. In 1858 it was ceded to the State, and is now used as a Palais de Justice. [Illustration: GOTHIC CARVED WOODWORK FIFTEENTH-SIXTEENTH CENTURY _Bavarian National Museum: Munich_] [Illustration: PLATE LVII HOUSE OF JACQUES COEUR: CHAPEL CEILING] Specimens of Gothic Wood Carving Examples of decorative carving in wood dating prior to the Middle Ages are extremely rare. Some sculptured figures of saints, and other fragments of a more solid sort, have survived, but the more delicate ornamental work has disappeared. Indeed most of the ornamental wood-carvings which have come down to us even from the Middle Ages belong almost exclusively to the end of that period, when, especially in Germany, the art attained unrivalled productiveness and excellence. [Illustration: GOTHIC CARVED WOODWORK FIFTEENTH CENTURY _Bavarian National Museum: Munich_]