The Virtue of Art

"I reply that art should be called nothing else than the right reason about things to be made. Their good does not consist in any disposition of the human will but rather that the work that comes to be is good in itself. the artist is not praised as an artist because of the will with which he works but because of the quality of what he makes.
Art then is properly an operative habit. Nonetheless it has things in common with the speculative habit because in the latter too what counts is the things they consider rahter than the way will relates to them. So long as the geometer demonstrates the true, the condition of his appetitive part - whether he is happy or sad - is irrelevant, as it is with the artist, as was mentioned. Art has the note of virtue, then, in the same way as a speculative habit does. Neither art nor the speculative habit produces a good work with respect to use, which is proper to the virtue perfecting appetite, but only gives the capacity of acting well." Thomas Aquinas Summa theologiae, First Part of the Second Part, Question 57, article 3 as quoted byRalph McInerny in A First Glance At St. Thomas Aquinas.