I am not writing this to be sentimental. I am just trying to find an answer to a story…

An artistic girl in Renaissance Venice, quietly rebelling against the constraints of her gender.

A young milordi on a European Grand Tour, recognising the world and his secret sexuality.

A ballerina in nineteenth-century Paris, choosing between suitors.

A Greek mother, beginning a new life with her family in a migrant reception centre in regional Australia.

And, finally, a paintings conservator in contemporary Melbourne, breaking her own heart.

A single, small artwork – subversive, hidden, and oddly blue – somehow survives for five hundred years, linking the lives of these characters.

An intricate tale of grief and discovery, of watery destruction and earthly love.