A novel of art and illusion, doomed love and a tulip bulb...
The painters of Amsterdam in the 1630s are busy: the city's inhabitants intend to guarantee their immortality with gold. Sitting for such a portrait is Sophia Sandvoort, beside her elderly husband Cornelis. They are surrounded by objects showing her husband's piety, yet he has not been able to resist including a tulip, its petals full and on the point of dropping. For Cornelis, like many of his fellow Dutchmen, has made money from the speculation on this exotic flower and its bulbs.
As the painter, Jan van Loos, starts to capture Sophia's likeness on his canvas so a slow passion begins to burn. And as the execution of the painting unfolds, so a slow dance is begun between the household's inhabitants. Ambitions, desires and dreams breed a grand deception, and as the lies multiply, events move towards a thrilling and tragic climax.
