The Peace of the Ladies, Treaty of Cambrai, 1529

This oil painting by Francisco Jover y Casanova, executed in 1871 and held at the Museo del Prado in Madrid (currently on deposit at the University of Santiago de Compostela), depicts the signing of the Treaty of Cambrai on 3 August 1529, remembered in history as the "Peace of the Ladies" (Paix des Dames). The scene brings together the two negotiators who alone conducted the talks on behalf of their respective sovereigns: Louise of Savoy, mother of Francis I and regent of the kingdom of France, and Margaret of Austria, aunt of Charles V and regent of the Netherlands, who met at Cambrai to end eight years of open war between France and the empire of Charles V. This treaty, more lenient than the Treaty of Madrid it replaced, saw Francis I definitively renounce his claims to Milan and Naples while Charles V abandoned his claim to Burgundy, and secured the release of the French king's two sons, held hostage in Spain since 1526. Painted more than three centuries after the events, the work reflects nineteenth-century history painting's interest in this unusual diplomatic episode, in which two powerful women, with a candour their respective son and nephew would probably never have allowed themselves, succeeded in ending a conflict the men had been unable to resolve.