The article offers an analysis of the visual representation from a semiotic point of view. At the beginning, the author presents the notion in Peircean semiotic conception, pointing to the most important thesis and emphasising the connection between mediation and representation. The next part covers a description of the French pictorial semiology and the way the phenomenon of representation is analysed in this approach. In the last paragraph, the author describes the most important points in J. Łotman’s theory of history and a symbol described as a medium of cultural memory. The final conclusion is that a concept of a visual representation is far more comprehensive when considered as a sign-structure, and – as a result – from a semiotic point of view, it can mediate, re-present and preserve either on the micro scale of a single culture sign or an image, and in the cultural memory as well.