Goltzius and the Pelican Company is a 2012 historical drama film written and directed by Peter Greenaway and starring Ramsey Nasr, F. Murray Abraham and Giulio Berruti.
The film is based on the life of Hendrik Goltzius, a late 16th-century Dutch printer and engraver of erotic prints. He seduces the Margrave of Alsace into paying for a printing press to make and publish illustrated books. Goltzius promises him an extraordinary book of pictures of the Old Testament Biblical stories. Erotic tales of the temptation of Adam and Eve, Lot and his daughters, David and Bathsheba, Joseph and Potiphar's wife, Samson and Delilah, and John the Baptist and Salome. To tempt the Margrave further, Goltzius and his printing company will offer to perform dramatizations of these erotic stories for his court.
Goltzius and the Pelican Company is the second feature in Greenaway's film series "Dutch Masters", which includes the previous film Nightwatching. The third entry in the series was to focus on Hieronymus Bosch and its release was planned to coincide with the 500th anniversary of Bosch's death in 2016.
Goltzius and the Pelican Company made its debut at the 2012 Netherlands Film Festival.
The film was released in cinemas two years after its debut in 2012. It was released in the Netherlands on September 18, 2014, and it became the least visited Dutch co-production of that year with only 110 tickets sold.
January 8, 2015, the film had its Philadelphia premiere at Andrew's Video Vault at The Rotundra (4014 Walnut Street) on a double feature with Derek Jarman's Blue (1993).
November 14, 2017, Woodmere Art Museum (Philadelphia) presented the movie, introduced by art historian Nicole Elizabeth Cook.
Greenaway won the FICE Award for Best European Director at the FICE- Federazione Italiana Cinema dâÂÂEssai in 2014. He was also nominated for the New Visions Award for Best Motion Picture at the Sitges - Catalan International Film Festival in 2013.