Why should a banker, two actresses and a seamstress meet at a riverside restaurant? What did the Impressionist hope to find there? Did he have enough money to pay for his lunch? These are the Questions we sometimes ask when we look at a great painting. They are also the kind of questions Rose-Marie and Rainer Hagen have put to the masterpieces collected in this book. Their answers offer an unusually accessible account of the fashions and faiths, trends and intrigues, loves, loose morals and lifestyles of times past.