John II receives the submission of Charles II of Navarre

John II of France and Charles the Bad of Navarre were among the most dramatically adversarial figures of the fourteenth-century French court — their conflicts over territory and succession created the political instability that ultimately contributed to the Hundred Years' War. Blondel's 1834 canvas for the Versailles museum of French history depicts the moment of submission or reconciliation, a scene of political theatre in which the power relationship between king and vassal is staged for historical documentation. The Versailles historical programme commissioned such scenes systematically, creating a visual archive of the key diplomatic and military encounters of French history. Blondel was working from chronicle accounts and his own imaginary reconstruction, since no authentic visual documentation of this specific encounter existed.

The submission scene requires compositional encoding of the power relationship: the receiving figure must visually dominate the submitting one through position, scale, or light. Blondel arranged the figures to make the hierarchy legible without requiring prior knowledge of the historical event, using bodily gesture and spatial organisation to communicate the scene's essential meaning.