Jeanne de Penthièvre, veuve de Charles de Blois, rendant hommage à Jean IV, duc de Bretagne, à Nantes

This illustration by Hippolyte Bellangé depicts Jeanne de Penthièvre, widow of Charles de Blois, paying homage to John IV, Duke of Brittany, in Nantes, around 1365. The composition stages a political episode connected with the settlement of the Breton War of Succession, within a lively urban setting populated by nobles, clerics, soldiers, and spectators. The image emphasizes the solemnity of the act of homage, the dynastic significance of the scene, and the symbolic ordering of a princely conflict. Produced around 1844 for Jules Janin’s La Bretagne, the work is not a direct witness to the medieval event but a nineteenth-century historical reconstruction intended to give visual form to major episodes of Breton history.