This book is about a family tree: the line of descent that can be traced from Perugino in Italy in the fifteenth century to Edouard Manet in France in the nineteenth. It is not the usual kind of genealogy, of those connected by blood, more an 'apostolic succession', following the way in which art in Europe was taught, from one generation to the next, from 1480 to 1880. The book reveals how the nature and methods of artistic instruction changed over the centuries, from the guild system and the individual workshop to the academy and the establishment of state institutions dedicated to the purpose, as exemplified in France.