[341] 18) Frans Hals--Here we are again in the more joyous element of Frans Hals, also a Dutch painter who preceded Rembrandt^a 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]--What has happened, when you compare him with the Renaissance or Rembrandt pictures you saw? We are in the industrial^b 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^c, 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^d [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^e, 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.