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Where Weatherford and Kiefer are brooding and dense, Baselitz — generally not my favorite artist — has shown his most attractive side in a suite of decorative paintings installed on the building’s piano nobile, or first floor.

“Nothing beats it in the flesh,” said Robert Travers, the director of Piano Nobile, a London gallery.

Its consummate feature is a picture gallery on the piano nobile that spans the length of the building and measures out to five perfect 18-foot cubes.

Original elements were preserved whenever possible: elaborately coffered ceilings, Corinthian pilasters, painterly marble mantels in rose and scarab green, deep mahogany door surrounds and timeworn octagonal tiles that underlay most of the light-filled piano nobile.

“Those houses are built to be diplomatic residences with a piano nobile floor plan,” said Russell Firestone of TTR Sotheby’s International Realty.