Reading Comprehension

PT23 · S4 · P1 · Q3 Book About Rembrandt

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It has recently been discovered that many attributions of paintings to the seventeenth-century Dutch artist Rembrandt may be false.

https://assets.lsatlab.com/uploads/2022/04/pt23-p1.mp4

Topic

Rembrandt's approach to art and recent debates regarding the attribution and motivation behind his paintings

Framework

Challenge Position

Main Point

While Svetlana Alpers argues that Rembrandt's uniqueness lay in his entrepreneurial, market-driven approach to painting—including the marketing of his own persona—this interpretation places too much emphasis on economics and does not fully account for the profound artistic quality and aesthetic innovation that define Rembrandt’s work. The Most Valuable Sentence appears at the end of the third paragraph:

P1: Introduction—Disputed Rembrandt Attributions & Alpers’s Approach

Recent scholarship has called into question the attribution of many central Rembrandt paintings. Svetlana Alpers uses this controversy as a springboard to discuss how Rembrandt's style and approach to painting set him apart.

P2: Alpers’s View—Rembrandt as Entrepreneur

Alpers claims Rembrandt exerted strong control over his art and career, separating himself from traditional patronage and guilds. She argues that he operated like an entrepreneur and marketed not just his paintings, but his name and persona, motivated largely by economics.

3.

In the third paragraph, the author of the passage discusses aesthetic influences on Rembrandt's work most probably in order to

  1. suggest that many critics have

    Wrong Purpose: neglected to study

    The author is not trying to support the idea that "many critics" have neglected the influence of the Haarlem school. She is only saying that Alpers' focus on Rembrandt's marketing practices obscures a full understanding of Rembrandt's art, which would include an appreciation of lessons he absorbed from the Haarlem school of painters.

    3% picked this

  2. suggest that Claudius Civilis is

    Wrong Purpose: CC's resemblance

    At no point in this final paragraph is the author trying to support the idea that Claudius Civillis is similar to many paintings in the 17th century. It's brought up as a work that Alpers believes Rembrandt did an intentionally-crappy job on, so that he could get paid more money to touch it up later. The author isn't quite buying that story.

    1% picked this

  3. suggest that Rembrandt’s style was

    Too Strong: not affected

    The author concedes that, like Alpers has argued, Rembrandt was influenced by some economic factors. But the author thinks that this only tells part of the story. This answer, though, is saying that the author doesn't think that Rembrandt had any aesthetic decisions that were based on economic influences, which is contradicted by the first sentence of the last paragraph.

    13% picked this

  4. argue that Rembrandt’s style can

    Too Strong: best

    At no point is the final paragraph arguing, "The best way to understand Rembrandt's style is to see it as the result of his native Leiden." The author's final paragraph is saying, "There were a lot of aesthetic influences on Rembrandt: economic factors, his own meditations on painting, the Haarlem school, and the styles of his native Leiden."

    3% picked this

  5. Correct

    indicate that Alpers has not

    Why this is right

    The point of the final paragraph was summed up in the final sentence: The trouble is that while Rembrandt's artistic enterprise may indeed not be reducible to the works he himself painted (because, as Alpers has correctly noted, he also branded "Rembrandt" and outsourced his aesthetic to others), it is not reducible to marketing practices either (as Alpers seems to be incorrectly doing). The author says in the first sentence of the final paragraph that "Alpers' emphasis on economic factors sacrifices discussion of the aesthetic qualities that make Rembrandt's work unique." That sentence indicates that Alpers has failed to take some important aspects of Rembrandt's work into consideration.

    Skill tested: Local Purpose · how this choice captures the passage's function is the move to repeat next time.

    81% picked this

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