Baron Hans Heinrich Von Thyssen-Bornemisza died on Saturday, two months after settling a mammoth legal battle in Bermuda with his son Georg over the family's $2.7 billion fortune.

The Supreme Court fight to control the Bermuda-based family trust, which included one of the world's finest private art collections, was the most expensive in the Island's history, and is estimated to have cost both sides at least $100 million in legal fees.

The Baron, a German-Hungarian aristocrat, died of a heart attack in Spain on Saturday in his home near Barcelona.

After inheriting some 500 art works from his father's collection in 1947, Thyssen used his industrial and banking wealth to expand this to over 1,500 paintings, sculptures and other works spanning from medieval and renaissance art to abstract and cubist paintings.

In 1993, the Spanish government fought off competition from the United States and Britain to acquire the bulk of the coveted art collection at a bargain price of $340 million.

The intervention of Thyssen's wife, former Miss Spain Carmen "Tita" Cervera, was said to have been crucial in securing the collection.

Considered the most important private art collection in the world after that of Britain's Queen Elizabeth, the Thyssen-Bournemisza Foundation is now housed in two museums in Madrid and Barcelona. In a sign of mourning on Saturday, a black sash was draped over the entrance to the Madrid museum, a renovated neo-classic palace opposite the capital's world famous Prado art gallery. Scores of visitors signed a condolence book. A statement from the Thyssen-Bornemisza Foundation said the renowned collector died of cardio-respiratory problems in the early hours of Saturday morning at his home on the coast near Barcelona.

He had suffered from heart problems for over a decade and was taken into hospital last week.

A true cosmopolitan, Thyssen was born in Holland in 1921 to a German father and Hungarian mother. He adopted Swiss nationality after fleeing Holland with his family to avoid the Nazis. In 1926, his father had broken away from the steel business which made the family's name to diversify into other industrial and service activities. His uncle, Fritz Thyssen, remained in the steel industry and became an early backer of Hitler and the Nazi party, although he later turned against them. In 1946 Thyssen married Austrian Princess Teresa zur Lippe, the mother of his eldest son, Georg. It was the first of his five marriages.

Thyssen's fortune made him part of the international jet set of the 1960s and 1970s, criss-crossing the Atlantic to sit on the board of more than 30 companies.

Eschewing his father's dislike for 20th century art, the Thyssen avidly bought works by modern artist A torrid private life saw Thyssen divorced four times before marrying Cervera in 1985. An acrimonious law suit with his eldest son Georg to regain control of the family's $2.7 billion fortune was settled out of court in February. Thyssen had alleged his son owed him $232 million in unpaid proceeds from the family's trust, domiciled in Bermuda. The trial was the most expensive in the history of the British colony, with an estimated $100 million in legal fees, and left Georg at the helm of the Thyssen empire.

Thyssen's body will be transferred to Germany for burial in the family mausoleum at Schloss Landsberg, the Foundation said in a statement.

He is survived by his wife and five children.