The article considers the emergence and development features of the symbolic and emblematic system of children’s portraits in the 18th century. Children’s portraits, as well as the history of childhood in general, attract more and more attention of Russian and Western researchers; the largest museums of the country and the world devote their exhibition projects to this subject. This paper shows, for the first time, how symbols have been “reinterpreted” in accordance with the changes in the attitude of Russian society to the nature of childhood and in the artistic environment at that time, the “formulas” of its presentation in art. The article considers in detail the specifics of using a number of attributes by Russian artists in the context of children’s portrait images: books, floral symbols, animals and birds, toys and other items. As examples, there are considered the works of “capital” and “provincial” artists of the 18th century: I.Ya. Vishnyakov, F.S. Rokotov, D.G. Levitsky, V.L. Borovikovsky, as well as a number of authors whose names remain unknown. Special attention is paid to the issue of borrowing symbols, signs and metaphors from Western European art, their adaptation and transformation in Russian painting, taking into account national ideas about children and their subject environment. The article concludes that the children’s portrait symbolic sphere went through a difficult path during the 18th century, from a tool for personifying the male or female adulthood of a young model to creating the image of a child as a romantic symbol of the world of childhood, an elusive ideal.