Is it possible to set the equivalent of a src attribute of an img tag in CSS?

Question

Is it possible to set the src attribute value in CSS? At present, what I am doing is:

Answer 1

i used the empty div solution, with this CSS:

#throbber {
    background-image: url(/Content/pictures/ajax-loader.gif);
    background-repeat: no-repeat;
    width: 48px;
    height: 48px;
    min-width: 48px;
    min-height: 48px;
}

HTML: