Mining and Gothic Museum

[1] The end of the Middle Ages was the heyday of mining in the Prince-Archbishopric of Salzburg, even more so in Leogang.

When travelling Mary of Burgundy, once the wealthiest woman in Europe, child of Charles the Bold and wife of Maximilian of Austria, Holy Roman Emperor, used this miniature sculpture inside a sphere of boxwood as a pocket shrine attached to her rosary.

The prayer nut is the size of a walnut and opens into two halves of finely carved reliefs.

The upper half of the prayer nut shows Maximilian of Austria with the archducal coronet and Mary of Burgundy.

It dates to about 1200 and had been made in the earliest European enamel technique in Limoges, in the South of France.