The article is devoted to the research of visual semantics. Analogy is drawn between different forms of metaphorisation (so called tropes such as metaphor, metonymy, hyperbole, litotes, oxymoron and the like) used in rhetoric and philology and visual forms of figurative material which, to our view, allow to produce a metaphor. The study is carried out in the domain of painting. It is stated that function of metaphorisation lies not only in embellishment of  speech as it is believed in philology and rhetoric but from the point of view of psychological science it serves as a means of transformation of creator's and spectator's consciousnesses, a means of  generation and transformation of a visual image sense. The question of energetic (magic) potential of image is raised.