[337] 12) Rembrandt^a: ANATOMY LESSON--Now here these men, with great seriousness, study medicine. This was an unheard-of picture, at that time, to show such a scene of which certainly you would say it is not beautiful in the ordinary sense; it has all the ugliness of the reality, of disorganization of bodies^b. But at the same time, in the community of the teacher, with the men who are learning from him, there is again in this secular scene, ultimate reality^c communicated. 13) COMEDIANS, by Watteau^d--This is Rococo, the middle of the French 18th century, and is painted by the greatest of the French artists of the 18th century, and the greatest artist of any of the 18th century, namely Watteau--the title is Les Comédiens, or Comedians.--Now go to the next, because there I want to say a few other things.

14) LOVE IN AN ITALIAN COMEDY, by Watteau^e--Here again, comedians. Now look at these faces. Here I will say something which leads to our second level, and where I will come back to the second level, namely the forces of the comedians, of the Pierrot, of the harlequin, of the clown. They will reappear again and again. And they represent some ultimate reality^f in a very special way: they represent ALSO, like the Comédiens français in the picture before, and the other scenes, and in the Dutch way, the joie de vivre, the joy of living, the power of vital self-realization. But at the same time, they show an element of tragic sadness, in their faces, and that is something which shows that even in the seemingly most secular and most naturalistic forms of thought,

something comes through, inescapably, from the underground of life, from the demonic underground, from the tragic, in this case. We have seen something of it in the one picture of Ruisdael^g, and here