Inspired by the book The Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects by painter Giorgio Vasari, this historical soap opera, in which betrayals, kidnappings, murders and police investigations are interwoven, relates the discovery by the Italians of the secret of Flemish painting around 1470.

An American traveling in Europe suddenly disappears, and his daughter, married to an eminent scientist, receives a letter asking her to go to Antwerp, which she does with her young son. Both are about to disappear. OSS 117 is asked by his superiors to solve these mysterious disappearances.

A survivor of the Spanish Civil War who had been in French internment camps takes refuge with a family of winegrowers in the Jura. He becomes attached to this land that is not his own.