Vertical alignment of image in multirow column in tabularx at the top of the cell?

Question

I want to place an image with includegraphics in a multirow table cell in a tabularx, and it shall be vertically aligned with the top of the cell.

Example with a rule instead of the image:

    \documentclass[11pt, a4paper]{scrartcl}
\usepackage[ngerman]{babel}
\usepackage[latin1]{inputenc}
\usepackage[TS1, T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{tabularx}
\usepackage{multirow}

\begin{document}


\begin{tabularx}{\textwidth}{@{}p{3cm} X r}  \hline
\multicolumn{2}{@{}l}{{\huge{}My Beautiful Text}} & 
\multirow{4}{*}{\rule{4cm}{6.5cm}%\includegraphics[height=6.5cm]{../../../2012_Bewerbungsfotos/2012-01_MB_Bewerbungsfoto_col.jpg}
}\\[24pt]
a & b\\[6pt]
a & b\\[6pt]
a & b\\[6pt]
a & b\\[6pt]
a & b
\end{tabularx}

\end{document}

Screenshot of PDF:

How can I place the image directly at the \hline (identical with the top of the line where multirow is defined)?

EDIT to explain my "real" purpose:

• In the real document, there is no hline at the top of the tabularx (I only added the hline to better view the top of the cells),
  but I'd like the inserted image to be aligned with the top of the text, as it does not look good IMHO if the image which spans over the whole height of the table starts below the text.
  (the original document contains personal data, so I tried to construct an artificial minimal example.)
• the first line of the table is the only one with huge font size (heading), all the others are normalsize.
*

Answer 1

The \huge command raises the row height, but \multirow doesn't respect it. It would work if you would place \huge before the tabular environment. This would affect the cells, but you could use >{\normalsize} for the column specifiers. Yet the rows would be higher.

\begingroup
\huge
\begin{tabularx}{\textwidth}{@{}>{\normalsize}p{3cm}>{\normalsize}X>{\normalsize}r@{}}\hline
\multicolumn{2}{@{}l}{{\huge{}My Beautiful Text}} & 
\multirow{4}{*}{\rule{4cm}{6.5cm}%\includegraphics[height=6.5cm]{../..
...
\end{tabularx}

\endgroup

Alternatively, use the optional fixup height argument for raising the image:

\multirow{nrows}[bigstruts]{width}[fixup]{text}

With a fixup height you could compensate that you actually use different row heights.

Answer 2

A different approach is to put the image outside the tabular. We lower the image by its height minus the height of the strut in \huge size. The tabularx is "top aligned", so the image will be lined up with the first row; the depth of the box is made a bit longer (1ex) to help with the spacing underneath.

\newcommand{\foto}{%
  {\huge
   \raisebox{\dimexpr-\height+\ht\strutbox\relax}[0pt][\dimexpr\height-\ht\strutbox+1ex\relax]%
    {%
     \rule{4cm}{6.5cm}% put the image here
    }}%
}

\begin{document}

\noindent\begin{tabularx}{\dimexpr\textwidth-6.5cm\relax}[t]{@{}p{3cm} X}
\multicolumn{2}{@{}l}{\huge\strut My Beautiful Text} \\[24pt]
a & b\\[6pt]
a & b\\[6pt]
a & b\\[6pt]
a & b\\[6pt]
a & b
\end{tabularx}\foto