The rise and fall of a scandalous painter of his time unjustly persecuted by the authorities.
1619. On the cusp of The Thirty Years War, the world-wide movement known as The Rosy Cross is approaching its goal of replacing established religion in Europe. Frederick V of the Palatinate and Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia, are set to become the leaders of this movement, but face strong resistance from both Catholic, Protestant, and national powers.
The libertine painter Torrentius, who has become known to Frederick and Elizabeth as the inventor of a device that has military and mystical applications, finds himself pursued on both sides of the religious divide as a result of the clues he has left in one particularly mysterious painting. Are his intentions good or is he a threat to civilised society?
The story of his pursuit and persecution is told by five voices: diplomat and polymath Huygens; inventor and ‘artificer’ Cornelis Drebbel; ambassador and royal agent Dudley Carleton; Elizabeth of Bohemia; and the poet and preacher John Donne. Torrentius’s own contribution is found many years later when Huygens’s famous son, the physicist and astronomer Christiaan Huygens, brings all these accounts sections together.