The Este Monuments and Urban Development in Renaissance Ferrara examines the transformation of one of Italy's most important city states as engineered by a succession of Este rulers. During the course of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, four public sculptural monuments dedicated to Este princes were erected or planned for the city. Set into the context of the urban development of Ferrara, the four projects reveal the role that princely and public patronage played in the process of political self-fashioning and promotion in early Renaissance Italy.