The article is an attempt to identify four historical concepts or constructions of the child and childhood and discusses them in relation to the educational antropologies of each period, i.e. expert literary views of children in educational relationships. The source for identification of the concepts is art of the period, above all fine art. The author premises his approach on the existence of correspondences (productive correlations) between period writings on children and their education and modes of representing the child and his upbringing. The methodological starting point is the „archaeological“ method of historical investigation associated with Michel Foucault, which aims to regularities in (theoretical and artistic) narratives about specific phenomena (for example the child and childhood). These regularities Foucault defines as „discursive formations“ In his study the author distinguishes between the „discursive formation“ of the child and childhood in the early Middle Ages, the formation belonging to the period from the 15th to the 17th century, and finally the formations characterising the period of Romanticism and finally modernity. The specific features of an differences between these formations are discussed and clarified.