Many historians, artists, scientists, writers, inventors and citizens have carefully examined Leonardo da Vinci. His achievements left no doubt that he possessed the greatest mind the human race has ever produced. The “greatest mind” can be defined as the mind that possesses the greatest potential, the mind that escapes the limitations of age, time, prejudices and obsolete ideas. Da Vinci exemplifies this description with his works of anatomy and invention. His psychology also needs to be understood in order to fully see the man Leonardo da Vinci truly was. These aspects in particular lent themselves to Da Vinci's success as an intellectual. Leonardo da Vinci was born in a village called Anchiano in Italy on April 15, 1452. His parents were a peasant, Caterina, and a successful notary, Ser Piero. Even as a boy, da Vinci was known for his works of art. When he was young he was commissioned to paint a dragon on a shield, and to create his masterpiece, he studied crickets, lizards, bats, butterflies, and snakes, assembling parts of each into his painting. The end result was a legendary, wonderfully scary dragon. Da Vinci is very well known for his other paintings such as the Mona Lisa and the Last Supper, which are two of the most recognized paintings in the world. These paintings may not have been created if he had not studied art, but thanks to his apprenticeship with Verrocchio, which began around 1468, da Vinci is a great master. Da Vinci was by no means a starving artist, as he was on excellent terms with the French, who paid about 2000 gold scudi for a two-year pension and 560 scudi per year to Leonardo. For the French, as King Louis stated, the Renaissance Man was their “dear and good friend Leonardo da Vinci, our painter… at the center of the paper… supported, carried and impressed. These movements also helped him in his art, defining the muscles used for different tasks. Da Vinci made many seemingly random observations about anatomy. Studying his legs he noticed that a man has twice as much strength in his legs as is needed to support his weight. He also established that a man walks with his right foot and swings his left arm forward when walking, just as a four-legged animal puts both its left hind leg and right front leg forward. Da Vinci was also fascinated by the eyes, discovering that every object we see at midnight will appear larger than at midday, because at midday the pupil is smaller. Da Vinci was fascinated by the human body. Leonardo da Vinci worked diligently on anatomy, exhuming human corpses to fully understand how the human body works.