In this video, Price states that there is no good pre-Nicean evidence for the veneration of images (which is a de fide dogma and primary object of infallibility):
Nicaea II and the Veneration of Icons with Dr. Richard Price | 10/09/2021
In his work on 2 Nicea, Price wrote the following about the very late attestation of icon veneration:
To pray before an icon was to address the saint represented as if he or she was present in it or at least by it. An early text that makes this point explicitly is an epigram in the Greek Anthology by Agathias (third quarter of the sixth century) on an image of the archangel Michael (The Greek Mythology I.34, trans. Cyril Mango [1972] 115):
The wax, greatly daring, has represented the invisible, the incorporeal chief of the angels in the semblance of his form. Yet it was no thankless [task], since the mortal man who beholds the image directs his mind to a higher imagination. His veneration is no longer distracted: engraving within himself the [archangel’s] traits, he trembles as if he were in the latter’s presence. The eyes encourage deep thoughts, and art is able to by means of colours to transfer [to its object] the prayer of the mind. (The Acts of the Second Council of Nicaea (787): Translated with Notes and an Introduction [trans. Richard Price; Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2020], 8)
