At the time, Albrecht Dürer was regarded as the most prominent German Renaissance painter; as mentioned, his statue decorated the main entrance of the new museum building, next to that of Holbein the Younger. Of Dürer’s work, visitors had the opportunity to admire “Job on the Dung Heap”, a fragment of a larger retable. It was presented between Dürer’s “Portrait of a Woman with Her Hair Down” and the portrait of his father, which today is considered to be a later copy. The ensemble of Cranach paintings consisted of a “Virgin and Child”, a “Crucifixion”, as well as two princely portraits that were sold at a later date. The most recent acquisition was Cranach’s “Venus”, donated on 31 July 1878 by the long-time Board member Moritz Gontard on the occasion of the opening of the new building – just in time to find its new spot, presumably right of the passageway to the corner cabinet.

This highly erotic Renaissance nude had a congenial counterpart on the opposite wall – the “Two Witches” by the Dürer pupil Hans Baldung Grien. This painting, acquired by the Städel Museum only a few months before the opening of the new building at the Schaumainkai, was at the time interpreted as a depiction of heavenly and earthly love.