# Choir Stalls [View the canonical artwork record]() ## Artwork - Artist: [UNKNOWN MASTER, French]() - Date: 1501-1550 - Technique: Wood ## Commentary From the 14th century onwards, the choir stalls became large, elaborate structures of carved wood, adding a rich note in the choir of the church. The greatest and most complete set of carved stalls still extant is that at Amiens. There are 4,700 figures framed within a superb flamboyant scheme of decoration. The iconography is still treated according to the medieval tradition, mingling religious and profane themes. Accompanying the figurations from the Holy Scripture are representations of trades, fools, proverbs and licentious scenes. Cabinetmakers like Boulin, Huet, le Clerc, Meurisse, Avernier, or Turpin were perhaps influenced by the anecdotal profane art of Flemish wood carvers. During the High Gothic period, stall carvers indulged in a veritable orgy of fantastic forms. Expelled from capitals and pediments, the Romanesque feeling for fantasy took refuge in the misericords and the arm rests of the choir stalls. Monsters, animals, grotesque monks, and imps of all kinds were the favourite themes. In this way an extraordinary parody of society unfolds in the very choir of the church. This fantastic imagery had still to conform with the framework it ornamented; misericords and reveals have a functional use as supports, which compelled the maker to give them a shape appropriate to their use. ## Related artworks - [A Knight of the Golden Fleece]() - [A Miracle of St Benedict]() - [Adam]() - [Allegory of the Vanity of Earthly Things]() - [Altar frontal: Christ and Angels]() - [Annunciation]() - [Apostle \(detail\)]() - [Apostle]() - [Archangel Gabriel]() - [Book cover]() - [Book cover]() - [Bust of Cardinal Duprat]() ## Attribution [Web Gallery of Art]()