In the distant year 1849, shortly before his death, the great Karl Bryullov gave his former fellow student at the Academy of Arts, Afanasiy Pichugin, a certain portrait that drastically changed the fate of his descendants. Years passed, generations changed, and the portrait remained a blessing and a curse for the family… In our days, an old painter, Mikhail Andreevich Pichugin, is found dead in his apartment in the center of St. Petersburg. Was it murder or an attempted robbery? How deep into time does the thread of this crime go? Unraveling the Pichugins’ family secret will be the task of a young investigator from the investigative department, Nikita Borisov…