18) Frans Hals – Here we are again^a in the more joyous element of Frans Hals, also a Dutch painter who preceded Rembrandt^b and who is nearer to the Renaissance pictures I gave you before. Here the vitality is seen.

19) Now here is Sargent, the American painter [Portrait of Henry James]^e – What has happened, when you compare him with the Renaissance or Rembrandt pictures you saw? We are in the industrial society now, and I will start with this when we are through with the whole relation of religion and art. In the industrial society, even the human face gets a technical element [some laughter] not in itself, perhaps, but in the way in which it is reproduced. This picture is an approximation to photography, and photography is an invention of the industrial age. Now many people may say today, “Why portrait at all? We can have that much-nearer to the truth when we have good photographs.” This is a complete misunderstanding of the meaning of a portrait. If you want me to say it in a little bit paradoxical religious term, I would say: if God [regards] a man in the totality of his being, He might see the Rembrandt portrait, but He would not see the modern photograph – because the modern photograph is that which is transitory, in this moment, here and now; the portrait, if it is a great portrait, is the whole of the reality of this human being, which is seen in one moment by the artist, as God so to speak symbolically sees it from the eternal, in one moment of time. This is the meaning of portrait, and therefore portrait has a very special religious dignity, according to the fact that the individual person has a very special religious dignity.