Catholic iconography expresses in images the same Gospel message that Scripture communicates by words. Image and word illuminate and compliment each other.
The earliest images we have are from the Early Church from the catacombs of Rome. Here, again, is one from the Catacomb of Priscilla:
This is the earliest known depiction of Mother and Christ. In the same catacomb are Old and New Testament scenes, images of Jesus with a star over his shoulder - signifying Messiah, a scene of the last judgement, and the Annunciation.
This catacomb is mentioned in all ancient liturgical sources.
Christian art, including the Virgin Mary and Jesus, goes back to the beginning of the Church, integral to the liturgical growth and teaching of the Gospel.
In its rejection, and the rejection of monastic prayer and contemplative Christianity, we are left with..? Language and intellectual concepts, intellectual assent, believerism and so on. A vast reductionism of the early Church into conceptualization, rationalism and systematic logic for theology - a blind theology.
We might as well seek to eliminate sight and sound and touch and taste from our knowledge and experience of God.