Taking some of the late Wittgenstein’s observations on mathematics as a starting point, two images of the mathematician’s activity are contrasted and examined in this essay: the mathematician as discoverer and explorer of an independent reality, and the mathemati-cian as creator of analogies. We aim to make clear how Wittgenstein uses the second one to avoid some possible misunderstandings that have their source in the first one, if it is prejudged as a true explanation. In this way, we’ll attempt to show how Wittgenstein, by means of his philosophical observations about mathematics, pursues one central purpose of his philosophy: to change our way of seeing things and thus to free us from misleading analogies that may hold our thought captive.