The fresco cycle was located above the entrances of the Pellegrinaio (Pilgrims' Hall) and the church, between the limestone wall of the latter and what today can be interpreted as the demolition of a masonry frame, thus stretching, one scene after another, from the Rector's Palace almost to the mullioned windows of the House of the Foundlings. A wall-like backdrop which, according to Girolamo Macchi, would have been prepared ad hoc several years earlier, between 1316 and 1320, under the rectorship of Tese Tolomei, complete with a canopy that should have protected the work from the action of the weather. Despite the fame of the artists called to paint them and the fact that these frescoes became a prototype for Sienese painting up to the whole of the fifteenth century, no document of the time provides explanations about their execution. The first written record of this cycle is found more than a century later in the "Commentarii" of Lorenzo Ghiberti (1452-1455). A century later Giorgio Vasari completely removed Simone Martini from their execution and assigned them only to the Lorenzetti. According to his reconstruction Pietro Lorenzetti would have painted the ","Presentation in the Temple"," and the ","Marriage of the Virgin, ","which instead"," ","Ghiberti had attributed to Simone Martini while Ambrogio would have executed the ","Nativity and the meeting with the virgins at the temple",." In the early eighteenth century Girolamo Gigli was an eyewitness that the precious pictorial cycle was by then disappearing, irreparably damaged by the elements despite the presence of the canopy. A compromised situation that, between September 1720 and January 1721, convinced the Rector Antonio Ugolini to carry out a general cleaning of the hospital front, whitewashing with lime the house of the Wet Nurses and of the Rector, demolishing the canopy and chipping away at the frescoes on the façade of the church. This was uniformly painted in white and blue stripes, a "decoration" removed with the restorations of 1905-1907, which brought the wall back to bare, as we see it today. In this way, the little that remained of the precious fourteenth-century frescoes was erased forever, provoking controversy among contemporaries. Presentazione al tempio e lo Sposalizio di Maria, che invece Ghiberti aveva attribuito a Simone Martini mentre Ambrogio avrebbe eseguito la Natività e l’incontro con le vergini al tempio. Nei primi del Settecento Girolamo Gigli fu testimone oculare che il prezioso ciclo pittorico stava ormai scomparendo, irrimediabilmente danneggiato dagli agenti atmosferici nonostante la presenza della tettoia. Situazione compromessa, che tra il settembre del 1720 e il gennaio del 1721 convinse il Rettore Antonio Ugolini ad operare una generale ripulitura del fronte dell’ospedale, scialbando a calcina la casa delle Balie e del Rettore, abbattendo la tettoia e picchettando gli affreschi sulla facciata della chiesa. Questa fu uniformemente dipinta a strisce bianche e azzurre, “decorazione” eliminata con i restauri del 1905-1907, che riportarono a nudo il muro, come lo vediamo anche oggi. In questo modo, il poco che restava dei preziosi affreschi trecenteschi fu cancellato per sempre, suscitando polemiche nei contemporanei.