"[T]he true vanishing point of every picture is the death image, the Todesbild. The tomb effigy, the memorial portrait, and the death mask approach a condition of perfect substitutability for the irrevocably absent object, the once-living body. The dead person exchanges his body for an image; that image holds a place for him among the living (p. 29 and chap. 6). Belting describes this exchange, enacted in ancient cults of the dead, as the archetype of the image- body-medium triangle (p. 29). The photograph, the performance, and the statue, in turn, point directly toward that ideal exchange-ability. Essentially, every image wants to be a home for a lost soul. "Without the connection to death," Belting explicitly says, "those images that merely simulate the world of life quickly fall into a pointless circularity and the proverbial accusation of deceptiveness...." (p. 190). Death guarantees the image. Without that strong link to the irreversibly absent yet sharply desired object, the image would be a mere work of art."