The story of a painting as it moves from owner to owner through the centuries.

A teacher (Glenn Close) recounts to a new colleague (Thomas Gibson) the 300-year history of a painting she claims is a lost work by Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer. In flashbacks, the masterpiece changes hands among a chain of owners, including a 19th-century sea merchant (Jan DeCleir); a potato farmer's wife (Thekla Reuten); a socialite (Ellen Burstyn) in the early 1700s; and and a Jewish family during the German occupation.