Goltzius & the Pelican Company

Hendrick Goltzius (Ramsey Nasr), a Dutch engraver of erotic prints in the late sixteenth century, wants a printing press of his own and knows who can pay for one. He tempts the Margrave of Alsace (F. Murray Abraham) with illustrated Old Testament tales, Lot and his daughters among them, and offers to stage them for the court. Peter Greenaway frames the performances as crowded tableaux, bodies and painted backdrops pressed into a single flat plane.