Art and faith

Toward the end of “On Seeking God,” Nicholas of Cusa has this to say: “when an artists seeks the face of a king in a block of wood, the artists rejects everything else that is limited except the face itself.  For the artist sees in the wood, through the concept of faith, the face that the artist is seeking to observe as visibly present to the eye.  For the face is future to the eye but present by faith to the mind in an intellectual concept.”  I don’t think the last bit is phrased as well as it could be, but the notion that art is prospective, an act of faith, is arresting.