Portrait of Jakob Fugger the Rich

Jakob Fugger ran a banking and mining empire out of Augsburg and was, by most reckonings, the richest man in Europe. Dürer painted him around 1519, and the year matters. That summer the imperial throne fell vacant, and the crown was effectively for sale to the German prince-electors. It was Fugger's money, lent to the young Charles of Habsburg, that outbid the French king and made Charles the Holy Roman Emperor. Fugger later reminded him of it in writing, plainly. Dürer gives him none of that swagger. He sits in a plain fur-collared coat against a bare ground, a gold cap over grey hair, his face closed and businesslike. The portrait was worked up from a chalk drawing Dürer had made of him from life.