So I dived into Kronman and while I didn't find the part about "maya" you allude to, I went through the chapters "The World as an Aesthetic Phenomenon" and "Genius and Sublimity". I must say that it only further affirmed my view that pursuing "aesthetic reconstruction of moral values" is a futile enterprise.

I agree that the primary question is “What drove the artist to make [the art work] in the first place?” But we also cannot ignore the second question “What is the effect of a work of art on its viewer?” (though not for the reasons one may think).

All works, from l'art pour l'art to perfectly baked bread, have basically two components. One is utility another one is expression. Even art for art's sake has, if nothing else, the utility of emotional impact (or utility of raw expression -- that's the yin dot in yang or yang dot in yin so to speak). The "sublimity" then depends on two things. First, on how closely the author was able to express his "genius" in accordance with his intent, and second, how that expression effects the recipient, that is how closely the work "hits home".

In the case of "sublime bread" (or beer, vine, etc.) the author vs. recipient intersection is rather well defined due to biology of senses (though still on a rather wide spectrum), but in case of abstract concepts, such as art or moral values (and due to their nature and dependence on zeitgeist), it is completely all over the place. (I guess, you can extrapolate the cases that fall somewhere in between.) Thus, sublime aesthetic anything will always be a moving target hardly having any semblance of an absolute law.

And of course there's always that tiny detail that existence and the world don't need any justification whatsoever and morality is inherent in macro-level causality. But that one can be truly appreciated only if one knows oneself.