Zacharias is a painter who lived a hundred years ago. While he is painting his beloved girlfriend, who is sitting on a boat on the lake, the boat capsizes. The girl falls in the water, Zacharias jumps in after her, and they both disappear. The unfinished painting is left on the bank of the lake. Zacharias sinks down through the water and comes up again, a hundred years later, in the middle of a Copenhagen fountain - just as a large exhibition of his paintings is opening at the Royal Museum of Fine Arts. Among the exhibits is the unfinished portrait. To everybody’s dismay, Zacharias wants to finish it.