One of the main features of Gilles Deleuze’s lectures of 1981 concerns the importance accorded to the notion of modulation as a philosophical definition of painting. The novelty of such a framework lies in the correspondences established between analogical operations and artistic spaces of Western art. This article establishes the main moments of this analysis and thus point out its main technical, historical, and aesthetic implications. Ultimately, the notion of modulation is considered as the conceptual operator of a “heterogenetic” history of art within the framework of Deleuze’s philosophy.