Francesco di Bartolomeo Alfei has for long been considered a somewhat peripheral figure in analyses of mainstream fifteenth-century Sienese art; relegated to the margins of a greater artistic community that included contemporaries of his such as Sassetta, Giovanni di Paolo and Sano di Pietro. Regarded at best as a relatively minor player, no works have been firmly attributed to Francesco di Bartolomeo Alfei, although several paintings belonging to the Museo Civico in Siena and elsewhere have in the past been listed under his name. (See Figures 1 and 2.) That said, Francesco di Bartolomeo Alfei was more recently somewhat precipitously thrust into the limelight (only to be just as rapidly despatched back into his box by leading experts in the field) in re-considerations of the identity of the so-called ‘Maestro dell’Osservanza’ and questions about the authorship of the altarpiece of the Birth of the Virgin which was originally displayed in the Collegiata at Asciano. It is perhaps no coincidence, therefore, that an earlier attribution of the predella panel of the Resurrection of Christ in Dijon (now referred to as Christ in the Tomb) was changed from Francesco di Bartolomeo Alfei to the ‘Maestro dell’Osservanza’, before receiving its current attribution as by the hand of an anonymous Italian painter.

Previous assessments of Francesco di Bartolomeo Alfei have depended in large part on the archival research carried out by Gaetano Milanesi and Count Scipione Borghesi and Luciano Banchi in the second half of the nineteenth century. In the eyes of Milanesi, in particular, it would seem that Francesco di Bartolomeo Alfei might best be described as a painter of little note and lesser interest. According to the handful of references that were included by that author in his Documenti per la storia dell’arte senese, the artist was more often than not engaged as a journeyman painter in the Sienese ‘contado‘(Siena's surrounding rural area) and elsewhere, rather than in any significant artistic commissions inside the city itself.5 None of the former activities apparently brought much financial advantage. Indeed, on the basis of Milanesi's account, the artist frequently found himself out of work and in straightened circumstances; with many mouths to feed; several daughters to find dowries for and rarely producing anything of artistic merit that might have boosted his finances.