As the French Revolution approached, Louise Elisabeth Vigee Le Brun painted the queen's portrait in an attempt to win back public opinion. This documentary examines the historical and social context in which "Marie-Antoinette de Lorraine-Habsbourg, Queen of France and Her Children" was painted. It analyzes the work's composition and symbolism in terms of motherhood and political legitimacy, and attempts to counter the queen's reputation for debauchery. It also includes a discussion of Le Brun's background, Italian and Flemish influences, and her unique position as court portraitist in a male dominated field. Finally, we learn how the work was received by the Paris Salon and by the French people.

With a tiny and delicate paintbrush, Jean Fouquet adds the golden threads of a tentative humanism to "The Martyrdom of Saint Apollonia" (circa 1450) and unveils a glimmer of the modern era, crouching behind the horizon of the Middle Ages. This film analyzes the illumination for clues of what Fouquet sought to convey to viewers. Completed for a book of hours commissioned by one of Charles VIII's financial advisors, it portrays Apollonia's martyrdom as a mystery play- theatrical performances of Biblical stories popular in medieval towns- to distance viewers from the act of violence. The film also discusses Fouquet's journey to Italy, where he learned about perspective from Renaissance artists, and talks about his propaganda work as the Hundred Years' War drew to a close.

The roots of "Colourful Life" (1907), just like those of Vassily Kandinsky himself, were firmly anchored in age-old Russian soil. And yet the painting contains all the elements that were to accompany the painter in the greatest revolution in the history of art: the leap into abstraction.

This documentary examines Kandinsky's rejection of Western thought and efforts to preserve Russian culture during modernization. He contracted typhus during a trip to study peasant life; his feverish hallucinations inspired the work that evokes a forgotten golden age sought after by Russian Symbolist painters and poets. Finally, viewers learn about the philosophies on color and light that led him to compose his famous Yellow-Red-Blue.

As the war of colonization raged in Algeria, Eugene Delacroix was the first French artist to cross the Mediterranean. The naturalism of "Women of Algiers in Their Apartment," painted in 1834, takes us into the calm and simplicity of a harem as Delacroix saw it with his own eyes. This documentary looks at his attempts to counter Orientalist fantasies of Middle Eastern women held by European society and discusses his admiration of Lord Byron. It also details his journey through Morocco and Algeria as part of a French diplomatic mission, during which he witnessed the realities of North African culture that inspired him to document and recreate the scene of three sisters in their private quarters.

"A Lady in Her Bath" (circa 1571), by Francois Clouet, bears witness to a period in which the pleasure of the senses and the spirit were caught up in religious conflict. It gave rise to the despotic canons of beauty. Official painter to Charles IX, Francois Clouet is considered the French master of portraiture. In this year 1571, he has just put the finishing touches to a canvas as beautiful as it is enigmatic: seated in her bathtub, half-naked, is a woman of Diaphanous beauty; behind her, a rough-featured nursemaid breastfeeds an infant; at the back of the room a servant is busy. A Fete Galante painting? Portrait? A Genre painting? This film examines the painting's composition and symbolism.