Many pictorial representations of the optics of an astigmatic eye illustrate this defect with distorted and unnaturally elongated images. Are these pictures appropriate to explain ametropia (any refractive error of the eye), or to show possible effects of a toric intraocular lens, which will correct the astigmatism of an eye? What are the explanations for an obviously and traditionally wrong concept of astigmatism? Kepler and Descartes influenced the interpretation of the human mode of perception at the beginning of the seventeenth century. With their model of vision, using an optical path in the eye and an optical retinal image, a new understanding of perception similar to the camera obscura took place. The use of the term “retinal image” was customary until today. The pictorial sciences point out that these “retinal images” are not images in the actual sense, but rather reflections from the reflecting surface of the retina, which therefore cannot be the originators of sensory perception.