In belle ?epoque Paris, the Van Goethem sisters struggle for survival after the sudden death of their father, a situation that prompts young Marie's ballet training and her introduction to a genius painter.
The life of sixteen-year-old Griet is transformed forever when she goes to work as a maid in the home of Dutch painter Johannes Vermeer, and catches the eye of the famous artist.
In nineteenth-century London, artist Henry Chester falls in love with the delicate child beauty Effie, and makes her his bride, but Henry soon learns that the woman he wanted Effie to be is very different from the woman she is.
Explores the story behind John Singer Sargent's "Madame X, " a painting of twenty-three-year-old Amelie Gautreau which unleashed a storm of controversey when it was unveiled at the Paris Salon to show the young wife with one strap of her gown falling off her shoulder, and provides insights into the lives of the artist and his subject.
Presents twenty paintings--mostly of women--by seventeenth-century Dutch artist Jan Vermeer along with poems inspired by them, composed by American writer Marilyn Chandler McEntyre.
Art history professor Suzanne Nelson retreats into her research as a way to escape her failing marriage, but she soon finds her obsession with a mysterious painter overtaking her life.
