Portrait of Sigismund ('the Rich in Coin') of Tyrol, Archduke of Austria

Tyrol in the 1480s sat on some of the richest silver mines in Europe, around Schwaz in the Inn valley. Archduke Sigismund moved his mint to Hall in 1477, and in 1486 it struck the guldiner, a large coin worth a gold gulden. The thaler grew out of it, and from the thaler, in the end, came the word dollar. His nickname, the Rich in Coin, comes from that mint. An unnamed Tyrolean painter shows him around 1480 to 1490, an ageing man turned almost in profile, in a plain green coat against a red ground, holding a string of dark prayer beads. There is no crown and no badge of rank. A small fly is painted on the green cloth, as if it had just landed. Despite the mines, his debts kept growing, and in 1490 he handed Tyrol to his young kinsman Maximilian, the future emperor. The portrait later belonged to the collection at Ambras Castle near Innsbruck.