In the city of Ferrara, a major cultural and artistic centre of Renaissance Italy, Cosme Tura (c. 1430-1495) came to prominence as painter to the Este court. This book offers a new and wide-ranging approach to Tura's life and his enigmatic and stylistically idiosyncratic works. Stephen Campbell takes the career of Tura as a starting point for the investigation of such intriguing issues as the fifteenth-century artist's role and status in both court and urban culture and the bearing these conceptions may have had on Tura's distinctive style. Campbell provides an account of the role of the image in Ferrara's religious, political and intellectual life, broadening our understanding of the Renaissance beyond traditional discussions of visual culture that focus on Rome, Florence and Venice. The author discusses also how Tura and his contemporaries addressed local themes of ethnic, political and religious tension in their works.