The unbroken longitudinal wall, seen first by the entering visitor, was staged symmetrically. Hung on the central axis were a male portrait by the Frenchman Alexis Grimou, followed below by a biblical scene by “Bassano” and a painting by a pupil of Rubens showing an Oriental, an African, a Spanish, and a red-turbaned male figure in half-length (inv.-no. 241-243). In the corners, Städel had positioned (copies after?) Luca Giordano, which in the upper register flanked a Dutch genre painting and an image of a gray horse. This last painting Städel considered to be an autograph work by Peter Paul Rubens. The pairing of Italian and Flemish paintings was continued in the register with smaller-sized works: in the third row, on the right, a “Saint Cecilia” after Rubens and a painting by Simone Cantarini were presented as pendants (inv.-no. 253 and 255).

On the opposite north wall, a work by (or after?) Rubens, which Städel himself had described as a “Christ Healing the Cripple” (inv.-no. 298), occupied the centre of a painting tableau. The arrangement of the 17 small-sized paintings above the fireplace followed the principle of similarity and contrast: a presumably Italian depiction of a smoking man was for example contrasted with a Flemish image of a drinking woman (inv.-no. 280 and 282), while a “Venus Rising from the Sea” by the Bolognese Baroque painter Francesco Albani was combined with a Dutch livestock painting (inv.-no. 286 and 289). Yet, in this crowded arrangement French and German masters of the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries were represented as well.