This thesis examines the philosopher Michel Foucault’s view of painting as an experience. I study Foucault’s essay on Velázquez’s painting Las Meninas and his lecture on Manet in light of his view that the relation between images and texts, as well as between what can be uttered and what can be seen, are to be understood as symptoms of a variable structure of experience. I explore Foucault’s claim that concepts shape our experience by comparing his descriptions of the beholder’s experience of light and space in these paintings with his theory of representation in The Order of Things. Further, I analyze the specific role of painting in Foucault’s philosophy, as amediator of historical experiences. This study shows that, according to Foucault, the structure dominating both experience and knowledge in the early modern period was predominantly visual. Towards the end of this period images came closer to text, corresponding to a shift in the human sciences towards methods of interpretation rather than visual observation. This can be understood in terms of a new form of sensibility. This thesis challenges the interpretation that Foucault holds there to be a sharp discontinuity in experience by showing how painting, as an experience, transgresses epistemological boundaries. I claim that this experience appears through Foucault’s way of carefully examining and describing a visual experience of an image.