There is the view that the intellectual lives of individuals are fully determined (not merely influenced) by their social context–and there is the contrary view that the intellectual positions dominant in a social context and merely the result of the intellectual lives of individuals and their interactions. The former, collectivist, view was particularly strongly entrenched in the German historiography of the Wilhelmine and Weimar era–exemplified by various speculations that certain views or beliefs were inconceivable for members of certain groups. In his early papers–such as “Perspective as a Symbolic Form”–Erwin Panofsky also subscribed to such collectivist methodology. However, by 1938, when he wrote “Art History as a Humanistic Discipline” he rejected, in theory at least, the main tenets of collectivism, while remaining still tied to collectivist formulations of art historical problems. The paper analyses the gradual changes of Panofsky’s position when it comes to the collectivist-versus-individualist methodology of historical research.