This paper will examine several categories of women – wives, widows, rulers, single women – from various regions across Italy to survive the evidence in a comparative format to see just what women were capable of in terms of domestic architecture. Rather

Caterina Sforza (1462/3-1509) was famous during her lifetime because of her twelve-year regency over her husbands' territories in the Romagna region of Italy after his assassination. Scholars have focused on her political maneuverings and bold sexuality, but Sforza’s patronage and collecting were integral parts of her statecraft and merit further attention. Careful analysis of the surviving artifacts, combined with information culled from archival sources, reveals that Sforza, like her elite peers, was an astute patron and collector despite financial limitations. She updated fortresses and made key improvements to her subject cities, projects that demonstrated her beneficence as ruler. She also refurbished her residence to make it reflect the proper character of a prince and express humanist notions of magnificence and splendor. Always in need of more money, Sforza on occasion sought out workshops that championed cost-effective serial production and called on community support for some of the religious projects she initiated.