Throughout the Middle Ages, the Catholic Church remained a major patron of the arts, commissioning multiple artists to paint in cathedrals. During the Renaissance not only did churches hire artists, but wealthy merchant families also began to support artists, particularly the Medici family of Florence. Because the humanist movement in the Renaissance turned attention away from the church, or the divine, and placed emphasis on the human, the artistic style of a more secular nature. However, this new focus on the individual does not mean that artists stop producing religious works