In this book, dedicated to the nature of visual perception in art, the opinions of three outstanding scientists collided. Art critic Ernst Gombrich, drawing our attention to the problem of similarity, in particular in portraits and caricatures, concludes that we, often unable to describe the features of even the closest people, easily find similarities with the help of empathy. Psychologist Julian Hochberg gently counters this argument with his theory of canonical object shapes, suggesting that we perceive similarities through “cognitive maps,” or expectations, that arise in the complex process of visual perception as our eyes move across the surface of a picture in a predetermined sequence. Finally, the philosopher Max Black, having subjected these and other approaches to visual perception to conceptual analysis, argues that there are neither sufficient nor necessary criteria for determining the conditions of artistic representation, and concludes that artistic representation is a “cluster concept.” The essays presented here are based on the Thalheimer Public Lectures given by the authors at the Philosophy Department of Johns Hopkins University in the 1970s. The publication was published as part of a joint project between the Masters publishing house and the Ad Marginem publishing house. The publishing layout is preserved in a4.pdf format.