# The Sculpted Image **Opening (not a real abstract):** Pictures and sculptures make visually present to us things which are, and are given as, absent. Giambologna's extravagantly posed marble statue, Samson slaying the Philistine, puts before me two men wrestling, one on the cusp of a fatal blow (Figure 10.1). Pollaiuolo's engraving Battle of the Naked Men shows a group of naked warriors locked in mortal combat (Figure 10.2). In looking at either I'm presented with men at war and presented with them in a distinctively visual way. In this, the pair are typical of representational pictures and representational sculpture generally. But does this common feature hide a deeper difference? Is the form of visual presentation involved in the two cases the same? Call this The Question. **Authors:** [[Robert Hopkins]]