The author provides a detailed examination of Noël Carrol's theorizations concerning visual metaphors, focusing in particular on their reception and on concepts of homospatiality and non-compossibility. Specifically, Carrol's analysis is shown to be defective under two respects: first, his understanding of the verb "to be" in metaphors of the "A is B" kind as indicating identity is untenable both for verbal and for visual metaphors, as it neglects to take into account the context of utterance. Secondly, the relationship between homospatial components cannot be considered as bidirectional or entirely reversible, seen as homospatial visual elements do not hold the same salience. Finally, the author provides a partial solution to the problem, focusing on the concept of ellipsis in relation to mental images in cognition.