PrepTest 106, Section 3, Question 24
Surviving seventeenth-century Dutch landscapes attributed to major artists(53 more words not shown)
Which one of the following,(6 more words not shown)
- ATechnically gifted seventeenth-century(11 more words not shown)
- BIn the workshops(21 more words not shown)
- CIn the eighteenth(17 more words not shown)
- DSeventeenth-century art dealers(26 more words not shown)
- EMore seventeenth-century Dutch(26 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Equal numbers surviving today don't mean equal numbers were painted.
Imagine that minor artists produced far more landscapes, but people took better care of works by famous artists. Over centuries, many minor works could disappear while major works were carefully preserved. We could end up with similar numbers even if the surviving paintings were all correctly attributed.
That's my objection to the author's explanation. The author looks at many prolific minor painters and only a few major ones, then concludes that many paintings now credited to major artists must really be minor artists' work. Perhaps so, but unequal survival offers another explanation for the numbers.
What we’re looking for
The question asks us to strengthen the author's account. We should look for evidence of the misattribution itself: minor artists' paintings being passed off as the work of major artists. That would give the explanation support beyond the mismatch between the old market and the surviving paintings.
Working the answers
- A
Recognizable styles that are difficult to imitate would make it harder to pass one artist's work off as another's. That doesn't support the claim that many current attributions to major artists are wrong. If anything, it supplies a reason to think differences could be detected.
- B
Preparing paints and brushes isn't the same as painting the landscape. An assistant could supply materials while the major artist did the work. B doesn't show that assistants or minor artists created paintings later credited to someone else. We would have to add that crucial information.
- C
This is the alternative explanation we raised while reading. Minor artists' works were discarded or destroyed, so fewer of them survived. That helps explain why today's numbers might differ from the original production numbers without requiring mistaken attributions. It weakens the author's inference rather than strengthening it.
- DCorrect
Now we have a practice designed to create false attributions. Dealers paid minor artists to leave landscapes unsigned, then added phony signatures so the paintings could be sold as more valuable works.
That gives both a way for minor works to acquire more prestigious identities and a financial reason for doing it. It doesn't identify every incorrectly attributed painting that survives today, but it makes the author's explanation substantially more credible than the numbers alone did.
- E
Some paintings from both groups were lost. What we need to know is whether those losses explain the equal surviving numbers or whether false attributions do. E gives no comparison of the groups' survival rates and no evidence of misidentification.
For example, saying both groups lost paintings doesn't tell us whether one lost a small fraction and the other lost most of its work. The general fact of loss doesn't settle the explanation the author offers.
More Strengthen questions
Learn the LSAT our way
Our platform drills Strengthen questions at your level and adjusts as you improve.