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In the suburbs of Pittsburgh, Fiona Bruce meets Laura and Pat, who purchased a painting of a young woman grieving over a funerary urn. It cost $200 from an estate auction, and it has been languishing in a closet for several years. Laura has discovered a print by celebrated 18th-century artist Angelica Kauffman, and it's almost identical to their painting.

In an 1890s biography of Kauffman, Philip Mould discovers that there was once a painting just like Laura's, believed to be missing and described as one of Kauffman's best paintings. He asks: could Laura and Pat have stumbled across a lost treasure?

Clues on the back of the picture lead Fiona to investigate a Pittsburgh steel magnate and a historic local art gallery. Her search for information about the woman commemorated in the painting, described as ‘General Stanwix’s daughter’, takes her to Fort Pitt, a British colonial stronghold that grew into the city of Pittsburgh.

At the Royal Academy in London, where Kauffman was one of just two female artists included in the founding membership in 1768, Philip finds connections between recognised works by Kauffman and Laura's picture.

The poem included in the painting provides more evidence, linking the picture to famous surgeon John Hunter and his wife Anne, a renowned poet. Can Fiona uncover an unbroken line of provenance, and could the artist's own handwriting provide further clues?

Technical analysis at the Hamilton Kerr Institute in Cambridge, though, raises worrying questions about the condition of the picture and its pigments, and Kauffman's popularity at the time raises concerns around the prevalence of copies and reproductions.

Will the team persuade the recognised experts on Kauffman that this picture is indeed a lost masterpiece by one of the leading names in 18th-century art?