Tolstoy says that our art should be “appraised on the basis of that religious perception”; why then does he frown upon the “so-called Renaissance”?

"The chief mistake made by people of the upper classes of the time of the so-called Renaissance - a mistake which we still perpetuate- was not that they ceased to value and to attach importance to religious art (people of that period could not attach importance to it, because, like out own upper classes, they could not believe in what the majority considered to be religion)" (Tolstoy, 242).

I think Tolstoy was trying to say that, while he thinks art can only make progress through religious perception, the most powerful people of the Renaissance did not continue that progress.  Tolstoy always talks about how art will bring mankind together, to eventually, form a universal brotherhood.  While he also states that art can only attain this type of unity and progress through religious perception, he also knows that art in which religion is used as a vehicle to create does not always entail that it coincides with the best perception of the time.  Tolstoy used the Renaissance as his example.

He says that while the art had a certain religious aspect, the audience, mostly the upper classes, was quite limited and did not convey religious meaning that the general public shared at the time.  Therefore, while the art was very religiously influenced, he deemed it bad art, because it failed to uphold the second part to his condition of progress towards the brotherhood; it failed to unify the people.  Tolstoy knew that religious art was only effective if it shared in the religious beliefs of the masses, not the fancies of the upper echelon.