While I was in Italy I read that in the backrooms of a convent near a church in Florence they found a place where Leonardo worked in 1500 in which there are traces of a fresco attributed to Leonardo's school, that show impressive similarity to the master's works: flying birds that bring to mind Leonardo's studies of flight. The most impressive is a front view of an angel set in an altar piece, reminding us of the kneeling angel of the Annunciation painting at the Uffizi Museum in Florence.

That was the time when Leonardo returned to Florence after 19 years of stay in Milano, and that is called the Leonardo's Second Florentine Period. He returned because Milan had been occupied by the French. But Florence at that moment was in a great depression and not a happy time for Leonardo. Maybe that is why he used that place as a bottega.

Rina de' Firenze