FLORENCE, ITALY.- Alessandro Vezzosi, director of the Leonardo museum near Florence said that some upstair rooms in a convent may have been used as a workshop by Leonardo da Vinci and his pupils. The rooms are decorated with fading frescoes of birds in flight. The rooms are located in in a building where the Florence's Institute of Military Geography and the Santissima Annunziata Monastery are. There are frescoes that could be attributable to Leonardo's school. According to Vezzosi, da Vinci could have conceived or completed an early version of the "Mona Lisa" in the workshop, since the family of the probable subject of the painting, Lisa Gherardini, had links to the site.

Alessandro Vezzosi stated, "The researchers made the hypothesis that these were the rooms where Leonardo and his pupils worked," he said.

In the rooms there are also an outline of a kneeling angel similar to Leonardo's "Annunciation" that hangs in Florence's Uffizi museum. The rooms are not yet open to the public.

Vezzosi further stated, "these studies might be able to tell us more about the environment in which Leonardo lived."

Researcher Roberto Manescalchi stated, "For the first time in this case we see birds which are absolutely dynamic, animals which are absolutely vivid and remind us of the study done by Leonardo of birds in flight."