Albrecht Dürer, the Prince of Painters, has little patience for teenage apprentices, but he makes an exception for Adrian Schaller, intrigued by the boy’s exceptional skill and inscrutable character. Dürer takes the prodigy into his service, unaware that his student is really Klara, a runaway painter’s daughter. Klara and her companion Jakob, a charming 17-year-old locksmith with a knack for trickery, enjoy their false lives in the splendid Imperial City of Nuremberg. Driven by sheer mischief, and in need of a full travel purse should their swindle be exposed, they begin to scam gullible fools and greedy crooks all over the city. All the while, Klara is haunted by her conscience. Is she bound to hell for all her misdeeds? Now that she’s lived as a carefree young man, can she ever be a dutiful wife? Dürer’s emotionally unstable younger brother discovers their secret and pressures the two pretenders to use their cunning for his own dubious ends. As Jakob and Klara face ever more powerful adversaries, their stunts grow more dangerous – while Albrecht Dürer has no inkling that his stellar reputation is in grave peril.