We all know this scene: two women in a bathtub, one pinching the tip of the other's breast, the other holding a ring between her thumb and forefinger.

The narrator of The Purple Line, a young, somewhat disillusioned academic, also saw it at the Louvre. But now a strange manuscript reveals its incredible mystery: the painting supposedly explains the death of his mistress Gabrielle d'Estrées, a few days before her marriage to King Henry IV.

What explanation can be given for her death on the eve of her coronation? What is the connection with the work? Was Gabrielle poisoned by Grand Duke Ferdinand? Why did diplomatic dispatches between Paris and Florence stop a few days before?

In this magnificent novel, Wolfram Fleischhauer takes his reader into a dark and brutal world, following in the footsteps of Vignac, a young painter whose ambition will lead to his downfall. In the France of Henry IV, still troubled by the Wars of Religion and the political maneuvering of the great European powers, an artist discovers that a few brushstrokes are enough to draw you into the most Machiavellian stratagems of high politics.