This lecture focuses on Domenico Ghirlandaio, the prolific master who transformed sacred history into a mirror of contemporary Florentine society. We will analyse his vast fresco cycles, particularly those in the Sassetti and Tornabuoni Chapels, where biblical narratives are staged within recognisable Florentine piazzas and populated by the city’s bourgeois elite. The session will explore how Ghirlandaio’s "prosaic" realism and precise documentation of costume, architecture, and gesture serve as an invaluable historical record of the Medicean Golden Age. By examining his workshop organisation and his distinct portrait style , we will define his role not as a radical innovator, but as the supreme craftsman who codified the confident, secular spirit of late Quattrocento Florence.