Städel Collection
700 Years of Art

European painting from 1300 to 1800. The oldest works of art are still deeply rooted in the Christian faith of the Middle Ages.

With the beginning of the Renaissance, the reality of the humanistically educated human being becomes the focus of attention. The increasingly emotional representations proves to be complex in content until well into the Baroque.

In March 2024, a new room was created in the Old Masters galleries where visitors can encounter the founder and namesake of the museum, Johann Friedrich Städel, and his vision of a citizens’ museum.

Contemporary art in the Städel spans the period from 1945 to the present day.

This period brings together a large number of very different art movements, which position themselves to each other or against each other in ever shorter periods of time. The collection reveals wide-ranging intertwinings over decades, schools, isms and groups.

Photography already made its way into the Städel Collection as far back as ca. 1850. Today the museum holdings encompass more than 5,000 works dating from the medium’s beginnings to the present.

Initially used to fulfil utilitarian purposes, it gradually became an art form in its own right that set—and continues to set—new aesthetic standards. Photography has many faces: it is reproduction, documentation, staging, imprint, advertisement, art, and much more. It revolutionized our visual habits and still interacts with painting to this day. The Städel Museum’s photography collection mirrors this development.