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, individual Este princes constructed and embellished palaces and citadels, founded and supported churches and monastic complexes, and encouraged or sponsored major urban projects, including the famous Ercolean Addition, as a means of glorifying their city and defining their own position within it. These projects mirrored the concerns and ambitions of the sponsoring ruler, but as public architectural works they were also subject to structural, functional, and financial constraints. In tandem with these projects, four public sculptural monuments dedicated to Este princes were also erected or planned for the city. These monuments demonstrate even more clearly how art was manipulated for political ends.

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.