The interests of art historian Max Raphael often diverged from the academic art history of his time. Alongside colleagues like Erwin Panofsky and Edgar Wind, he shared the goal of addressing the methodological weaknesses in his field. When he elevated prehistoric cave painting to a fundamental component of the art history he conceived, it was a radical and provocative approach that continues to inspire engagement with prehistoric objects to this day. Programmatically representing this perspective is the text "The Iconography of Quaternary Art," published here for the first time, in which Raphael explicitly attributes to prehistoric humans the capacity for art, and thus for civilization. He recognizes in the images the order of an iconography and describes prehistoric cave painting as an art form with its own unique considerations.