The city of Florence was at that time the greatest centre of the arts and learning in Italy.[9] Art was sponsored by the Signoria (the town council), by the merchant guilds and by wealthy patrons such as the Medici and their banking associates.[10] The Renaissance, a renewal of Classical scholarship and the arts, had its first flowering in Florence.[9] In the early 15th century, the architect Filippo Brunelleschi had studied the remains of Classical buildings in Rome and created two churches, San Lorenzos and Santo Spiritu, which embodied the Classical precepts.[11] The sculptor Lorenzo Ghiberti had laboured for fifty years to create the bronze doors of the Baptistry, which Michelangelo was to describe as The Gates of Paradise.[12] The exterior niches of the Church of Or San Michele contained a gallery of works by the most acclaimed sculptors of Florence – Donatello, Ghiberti, Andrea del Verrocchio, and Nanni di Banco.[10] The interiors of the older churches were covered with frescos (mostly in Late Medieval, but also in the Early Renaissance style), begun by Giotto and continued by Masaccio in the Brancacci Chapel – both of whose works Michelangelo studied and copied in drawings.[13] During Michelangelos childhood, a team of painters had been called from Florence to the Vatican, in order to decorate the walls of the Sistine Chapel. Among them was Domenico Ghirlandaio, a master in fresco painting, perspective, figure drawing, and portraiture. He had the largest workshop in Florence, at that period.[10]