until his election to the Papacy. He was appointed papal legate to Perugia on 5 November 1488, and departed Rome on 15 November. He served in Perugia until 1489. Todeschini-Piccolomini participated in the conclave of 1492 which elected Pope Alexander VI. He belonged to the faction of the more senior cardinals who gathered around Cardinal Oliviero Carafa of Naples. Cardinal Francesco was sufficiently respected that he received six votes at the first scrutiny (Sixteen were needed to elect), seven on the second, and one on the third. He resisted the election of Cardinal Rodrigo Borgia almost to the end, as one of the five hold-outs. As Cardinal Protodeacon Piccolomini announced and crowned the new pontiff. He served as the protector of England at the Roman Curia from 1492 to 1503, and of Germany. He was appointed legate to King Charles VIII of France, whose army was then entering Tuscany, in the consistory of 1 October 1494, departing Rome on 17 October; he returned to Rome on 5 March 1495, after the King declined to meet him. On 27 May 1495, he and numerous other cardinals accompanied Pope Alexander VI on a visit to Orvieto, which had been arranged to avoid a meeting between the Pope and King Charles, who was returning from his expedition against Naples. Charles was in Rome from 1 to 4 June, and the Pope and his retinue returned to the city on 27 June. He was named the administrator of the diocese of Pienza and Montalcino on 31 October 1495, and occupied it until 14 March 1498, when he resigned in favor of his relative, Girolamo Piccolomini. Following the murder of his son Giovanni Borgia in 1497, Alexander VI appointed Francesco Piccolomini a member of a commission of six cardinals, in a short-lived effort to reform the Roman Curia. On 8 February 1501, Pope Alexander also appointed Piccolomini, in his capacity as Protodeacon, to a commission to take charge of the income from the tithe (decuma), and dispensing it for yet another contemplated crusade against the Turks. The Piccolomini Library In 1502 he commissioned a library with access from an aisle of the Duomo di Siena that was intended to house the library of humanist texts assembled by his uncle. Francesco commissioned the artist Pinturicchio to fresco its vault and ten narrative panels along the walls, depicting scenes from the life of Aeneas Silvius Piccolomini. Its