[371] the whole Middle Ages^a comes from above and is GIVEN to man, now comes from below and is aspired [toward], and is fought for, with the distortion of the bodily^b existence as it was rediscovered by the Renaissance^c. Therefore these long figures, these winding bodies, as we have them in the Baroque. It is an ecstasy from below, in contrast to the Middle Ages where the ecstasy comes from above. In the Protestant^d form of the reaction, we pointed to Rembrandt^e because here the individual relation of the individual to God is the decisive thing, not in terms of special acts of piety, but in terms of a biography painted in the faces of these old men and women, in which destiny and freedom in the light of the ultimate is visible, and is visible as a fight between destructive and creative elements. And in some of the late self-portraits of Rembrandt, the destructive is predominant, but it

always remains religious, in the Protestant sense of the word. With this we come to the end of this small and short period of reaction against the Renaissance. After 1650--again as a symbolic number--we have the great gap of religious art of 250 years in which I would say NO picture religiously worthwhile has been produced. Those which have been produced had certainly religious content, religious subject matter, but without a style in which the ground of reality broke through. And this is natural--that couldn’t be avoided--because in these 250 years we see the development of industrial society^f, prepared under absolutism, fighting

against absolutism, victorious in the 19th century, attacked at the same time by movements which were partly victorious in the 20th century. This history is the history of our period. This was what was going on in the 250 years, and for this reason no religiouspicture [sic.] worth mentioning