Hendrik Goltzius, a late-16th-century Dutch printer and engraver of erotic prints, seduces the Margrave of Alsace, the military governor, 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, he and his printing company will offer to perform dramatizations of these erotic stories for his court.