Much of the evidence considered here shows that Francesco di Bartolomeo Alfei continued in the eye and favour of the central government in Siena for the next thirty or so years following his involvement in the Ponte d’Arbia project. But until, or unless other fortuitous archival findings reveal otherwise, it seems that the artist's engagement in exploration work and visual propaganda painting signs on the gates and walls of subject communes from the mid 1450s onwards, and in particular following his posting as ‘vicario’ to Rigomagno around 1460, steered him away from commissions frescoing the walls of chapels to a very different and much less public kind of world.

Several aspects of the life and career of Francesco di Bartolomeo Alfei as presented by nineteenth-century historians are thus confirmed by my own recent reconsideration of surviving records. Not the least of these is evidence of the precarious state of the artist's finances throughout his life and the peripatetic nature of his profession as a journeyman painter. Romagnoli's research in particular laid the ground for my own attempts to understand the nature and scope of the work that Francesco di Bartolomeo Alfei undertook in the service of the central government in Siena. Curiously, none of the earlier historians provided insights to Francesco di Bartolomeo Alfei's workshop training; or, indeed, to the circumstances under which he established himself as an independent painter. That task, as I have illustrated here, fell to historians working almost a century later. Indeed I outline in this book how more recent research has not only furthered our understanding of Francesco di Bartolomeo Alfei's position as an emerging artist within the artistic community of Siena around the middle of the fifteenth century, but also encourages us to position him within a broader narrative of service to the Republic of Siena.

Following the commission to paint the chapel of the Fraternita di Santa Maria degli Angeli e Compagnia di San Francesco it does indeed seem as if the artist moved on seamlessly to a different kind of life; engaged in government business in Siena's southern territories and possibly already employed in the retinue of Leonardo Benvoglienti.