The hope and terror of the French Revolution and an immortal pair of lovers
Paris, 1791. The young painter Éléonore Duplay is on the Champs de Mars to sign a petition – and only just escapes a bloodbath at the hands of the assembled citizens. Éléonore flees to her father and other opponents of the absolutist monarchy in the Jacobin Club. When the charismatic revolutionary leader Maximilien Robespierre finds refuge in the Duplay home, they become close, even though Éléonore is already promised to another. While Robespierre, a convinced humanist, works on his dream of a free republic, Eleonore fearlessly fights for her rights as a woman and as a painter. Eleonore and Robespierre become engaged. For a much too short time, their shared happiness seems perfect... But soon the cruel turmoil of the revolution begins to demand ever greater sacrifices.
‘But that was not all the portrait was meant to show. What I was striving for was the embodiment of the revolution. [...] In hundreds of years, when my hand had long turned to dust, people would look at this picture and know why he had been trusted with the revolution above all others. And why I had loved him.’
