Q15 - Artists have different ways

[rmoncel]

C, D and E seem defendable to me.

C: indeed, if forgery could perfectly duplicate the contour and hatching styles of a famous artist, then this would contradict the fact advanced in the passage that differences in contour and hatching styles can be used to tell forgeries apart from works of famous artists. Perhaps the "CAN" in the passage implies that this is not always possible?

D. If the painting formerly attributed to Michelangelo was attributed to Clovio (as the passage states), then its contours and hatching must be of a style similar to the style found other other works of Clovio. Perhaps it is wrong to generalize to ALL of his paintings. This could be a flaw I suppose.

E. This is in line with the assumption in the passage that the works of the two artists were told apart because their styles were different. And if they were not different, it would be impossible to tell them apart!

Hmm....
Thanks in advance!

[giladedelman]

Thanks again for the detailed post!

So we're told that analysis of artists' methods of contours and hatching can help determine who really created a work of art, and that this analysis has revealed some works to be by Clovio, and not Michelangelo, as previously thought. What can we infer?

(E) is the correct answer. If contour and hatching were used to distinguish Clovio's work from Michelangelo's, then there must be an analyzable difference between the two.

(A) has a big red flag: the "main" features? For all we know, there's another feature that is much more useful in attributing drawings.

(B) is out of scope. We aren't told anything about forgeries of Michelangelo's work.

(C) is incorrect for the reason you suspect. The stimulus doesn't tell us that we can always distinguish artists' work by contours and hatching, only that this analysis "can help." We know it worked to distinguish Clovio's works from Michelangelo's, but that absolutely does not mean that no forgery can perfectly duplicate these techniques.

(D) is incorrect, and again, you hit the nail on the head. It's too much to infer that these styles are features of all of Clovio's works. Indeed, maybe some of Clovio's works were paintings, or sculptures, which probably wouldn't have the same features as his drawings!

Again, thanks for the question, and for letting me know how you were approaching it! I hope that explanation helped.

[rmoncel]

Thanks Gilad for the detailed post in response. Very useful!