The conclusion of peace in Angers, 10 August 1620

Three days before the peace in the title, on 7 August 1620, Marie de' Medici's forces met her son's army at Les Ponts-de-Cé and were routed. The settlement at Angers followed from that defeat. Rubens was at first meant to paint the queen taking up arms before the battle, a subject still mentioned in his letters in August 1622 and then dropped. This went up instead. Mercury, raising his caduceus, the staff of peace, leads the queen up the steps of a round temple whose Latin inscription dedicates it to the security of the sovereign. In the foreground a woman in white, Peace, sets a torch to a heap of armour and pistols. Beside her the Vices lunge in a rage that gets them nowhere, and the blindfolded one, Blind Fury, borrows the pose of an ancient statue, the Borghese Gladiator.