Nicholas of Cusa, On Learned Ignorance: In creating the world, God used arithmetic, geometry, and likewise astronomy. (We ourselves also use these arts when we investigate the comparative relationships of objects, of elements, and of motions.) For through arithmetic God united things. Through geometry He shaped them, in order that they would thereby attain firmness, stability, and mobility in accordance with their conditions. Through music He proportioned things in such a way that there is not more earth in earth than water in water, air in air, and fire in fire, so that no one element is altogether reducible to another. As a result, it happens that the world-machine cannot perish.... And so, God, who created all things in number, weight, and measure [Wisdom 11:21] arranged the elements in an admirable order. (Number pertains to arithmetic, weight to music, measure to geometry).*

...you will recognize that the art of calculating lacks precision, since it presupposes that the motion of all the other planets can be measured by reference to the motion of the sun. Even the ordering of the heavens --with respect to whatever kind of place or with respect to the risings and settings of the constellations or to the elevation of a pole and to things having to do with these-- it is not precisely knowable. Since no two places agree precisely in time and setting, it is evident that judgments about the stars are, in their specificity, far from precise.*

...Conformably to the rule, there is no precision in music. Therefore, it is not the case that one thing [perfectly] harmonizes with another in weight or length or thickness. Nor is it possible to find between different sounds of flutes, bells, humans voices, and other instruments comparative relations which are precisely harmonic-- so [precisely] that a more precise one could not be exhibited. Nor is there, in different [of the same kind]-- just as also not in different men-- the same degree of true comparative relations; rather, in all things difference according to place, time, complexity , and other [considerations] is necessary. *

Nicholas of Cusa's Vision of God:

Your eye, Lord reaches to all things without turning. When our eye turns itself toward an object it is because our sight sees but through a finite angle. But the angle of Your eye, O God, is not limited, but is infinite, being the angle of a circle, nay of an infinite sphere, since your sight is an eye of sphericity and of infinite perfection. Wherefore it sees at one and the same time all things above and below.*

Precise equidistance to different things cannot be found except in the case of God, because God alone is Infinite Equality. Therefore, He who is the center of the world, vis., the Blessed God, is also the center of the earth, of all spheres, and of all things in the world. *

Nicholas of Cusa notes:

[T]his unintelligible [Reality] is encountered by the loftiest intellect --freed from all images-- when all things have been transcended." In God, all opposites coincide: "He is beyond everything simple and everything composite, beyond everything singular and everything plural, beyond every limit and all unlimitedness; He is completely everywhere and not at all anywhere; He is of every form and of no form, alike; He is completely ineffable; in all things He is all things, in nothing He is nothing, and in Him all things and nothing are Himself; He is wholly and indivisibly present in any given thing (no matter how small) and, at the same time is present in no thing at all.

Our distinctions of time and place are reconciled in God. The visio intellectualis "...occurs in darkness, where the hidden God is concealed from the eyes of all the wise.' "He is encountered --unlike any other existing thing-- ignorantly, or unintelligibly in a shadow or in darkness or unknowingly."*

As Nicholas of Cusa writes, God is "hidden from the wise," and is "...not knowable in this world, where by reason and by opinions or by doctrine we are led, with symbols, through the more known to the unknown." It is only through faith in Jesus that the mysteries of God are revealed. "Through faith we are caught up, in simplicity, so that being in a body incorporeally (because in spirit) and in the world not mundanely but celestially we may incomprehensibly contemplate Christ above all reason and intelligence."*

The Ambassadors can be compared to Erasmus' discussion of the Sileni Alcibiadis in his Adages:

What is most excellent in any way is always the least showy. In trees, it is the flowers and leaves which are beautiful to the eye: their spreading bulk is visible far and wide. But the seed, in which lies the power of it all, how tiny a thing it is! how secret, how far from flattering the sight or showing itself off! Gold and gems are hidden by nature in the deepest recesses of the earth. Among what they call the elements, the most important are those furthest removed from the senses, like air and fire. In living things, what is best and most vital is secreted in the inward parts. In man, what is most divine and immortal is what cannot be seen.... Lastly, in the universe, the greatest things are those not seen, like substances, which are called separate. And at the highest point of these there stands what is furthest removed from the senses, namely God, further than our understanding or our knowing, the single source of all things.*

Holbein asks us to look beyond his masterfully painted world of appearances because, in Erasmus's words, "...under these veils, great heaven what wonderful wisdom lies hidden." "If you crack the nut, you find inside that profound wisdom, truly divine, a touch of something which is clearly like Christ Himself."*