Q26 - Zachary: The term "fresco" refers

[panman36]

I think what gave me trouble with the correct answer "B" is that we know from the stimulus that it was extremely common for painters in Michelangelo's era to add painted details to their own fresco work after the frescos had dried.

But "B" seems unsupported to me since you could have thousands of painters, hundreds of which may use this practice. And I think it would be fair to say this is extremely common. However it wouldn't mean that stripping away everything except the original fresco work would be [i]unlikely[i] to restore them to the appearance the artist intended them to have

[geverett]

I don't feel like I have 100% grip on the question you are asking, but I feel like you might be misunderstanding the argument. Let me see if this helps:

Zach: Fresco is paint applied to wet plaster. After it dries the paint is preserved very well. In the case of the sistine chapel, other painters came in after the fresco dried and added things to it. If we want to restore the sistine chapel to the way it was before these other painters made these additions then we must strip everything away except the original fresco work.

Steve: It was extremely common during Michelangelo's time for the painter to add details after the fresco dried.

Alright, I think where you might be confused is in interpreting Stephen's statement. He is basically making the argument that since it was common in Michelangelo's time for painters to add extra details after the paint dried that it is also likely that Michelangelo did the same thing in the case of the sistine chapel so that if you strip the sistine chapel down to it's original fresco work you might not achieve the objective of "restoring the Sistine Chapel to the appearance Michelangelo intended it to have" since you might get rid of some of the extra details that Michelangel added to the Sistine Chapel himself.

I do think that extremely common = likely in this case.

[panman36]

He is basically making the argument that since it was common in Michelangelo's time for painters to add extra details after the paint dried that it is also likely that Michelangelo did the same thing...

So then it is a warranted leap to go from common to likely like this? I didn't think it was.

Let's say 40% of all frescos had additions made by the original artist after the fresco dried. Would this not classify as extremely common? There would still be a 60% chance that stripping away everything except Michelangelo's original fresco work would restore it to the appearance originally intended. So it wouldn't be unlikely as "B" says.

Thanks for the reply!

[geverett]

You have a worthy attention for details in that answer, and I do think there is something to your argument. The other answer choices suck so bad that sometimes when you are left with an answer choice that is not ideal it is best to eliminate the clearly wrong ones first. That being said I would be interested to hear an explanation of extremely common to probable/likely. It's an interesting thought for sure.

[panman36]

Oh thanks! It feels nice to have a gripe acknowledged I have to admit I chose "B". The other answers do suck and it is a "most strongly supports" question. But it seems that common to likely shift could be bait for a wrong answer choice.

To me, common is more of a numbers word whereas likely is strictly for proportion. For example, there are 20 million blue cars on the road in the United States -- they are extremely common. However, it is not likely that if you're an American driver, your car is blue.

P.S. that 20 million figure is just a guess. I don't think it can be too far off though

[aileenann]

I like this discussion a lot, and I feel tempted to have a gripe about this one as well. That's why we work from wrong to right - ALWAYS!

That said, let's take this apart a bit more. First, consider Zachary's argument. His basic rationale is that we should strip down to the original fresco work to get them the way Michelangelo intended them to be. This is, of course, preceded by a lengthy technical description of how fresco painting works. This is worth keeping in mind because it seems that Z is relying on this information to get at what he thinks Michelangelo would have intended - that the paint from the fresh plaster would be indelibly preserved and presumably viewed.

We can then read Stephen's point as saying that despite this use of the medium, whereby we look for the drying and assume that will remain forever, it was nonetheless (despite this limitation on the medium) "extremely common" for Michelangelo's peers to modify their own fresco work.

We can think of Stephen's point as packing some punch for two reasons. First, if Michelangelo was like his peers, he might have had the same intention/expectation, getting at the expectation-related part of Zachary's argument. Secondly, or perhaps just rephrasing, this suggests that Michelangelo, even if he didn't do this himself, might have intended that it be done to his frescoes, since the practice was extremely common. Thus this fact gives us two related reasons to think Michelangelo reasonably could/should have expected his frescoes to have details added.

In either of these cases, we see some support for the correct answer choice (B) because in either case this challenges Zachary's assumption that Michelangelo did not intend the frescoes to be painted over at all (in turn meaning we'd need to strip them to get back to Michelangelo's intended appearance for the frescoes).

Does this make it any more palatable? I realize this doesn't get at the question as to extremely common v. likely, but I think it's another perspective on the problem. And I think the other answer choices are definitely wrong for the following reasons:

(A) is entirely out of scope - we never saw anything as to the technical feasibility of making such distinctions.

(C) is also out of scope because we don't care about a paintings' overall design. This could be a tempting wrong answer choice if we ellided this idea with Michelangelo's intention, but these are not necessarily the same.

(D) again does not get at Michelangelo's intention, and is entirely out of scope. Who cares how important these artists were?

(E) is also out of scope. Whether Michelangelo was satisfied doesn't tell us about his intention.

So it's definitely (B) even if we don't like that answer choice very much.

[jimmy902o]

Can someone go into more detail as to why C is wrong? For starters I do not understand how one can "add painted details" without affecting a paintings overall design, to me these two ideas go hand in hand. From Stephen's response, we know that it was common for painters to make additions, and Zachary says that additions obscures a paintings work. C links these to statements together so I am having a tough time seeing why this is wrong?


Like everyone else I think B is a horrible answer because we need to assume that Michelangelo did in fact either make alterations himself or approve of someone else doing so, both of which made my shy away from the answer choice. Thanks.

[ohthatpatrick]

Let's think about what we know from Stephen's response, and judge whether it could support (C).

We know it was extremely common for painters to add extra details to their fresco after a certain amount of initial work had already dried.

Is it possible from this to judge whether those extra details were an integral part vs. a less consequential part?

You mentioned that "adding details" means "affecting the overall design". I agree.

But does "adding details" mean that we are definitely adding "integral details"?

This modifier, 'integral', (i.e. 'crucial', 'necessary', the most extreme, and therefore suspicious, word in this answer) is why (C) is too much of a stretch.

Michelangelo may have only painted the initial sky blue background of the Sistine Chapel, let the fresco dry, and then added the "extra details" of all the people (this seems like an integral part).

Or, he may have painted almost everything he wanted, let the fresco dry, and then added the "extra details" of shadows underneath the folds of someone's robe (this seems like a NON-integral part).

We have no means of judging how important or subtle those extra details were.

Let's take the example of the subtle shadows as Michelangelo's "extra details" on the Sistine Chapel.

Do we know that he considered those shadows an integral part of the overall design? (maybe, since he was probably a perfectionist, but maybe not)

Do we know that he intended those shadows to be part of the final appearance of his work? (here, I think we're more certain that he INTENDED for the shadows to be part of the final work).

To support (B), we only need to believe that he INTENDED the extra details to be part of the final appearance.

To support (C), we also need to know whether he considered any of these extra details integral to the overall design.

(B) is the more conservative idea; it stretches less from the provided info.

And just to weigh in on the "extremely common" = "likely"? debate, I agree that "extremely common" is still not a quantifiable concept, while "likely" is quantifiable ( > 50% chance).

But ... the fact that they say "EXTREMELY common" vs. just "common" makes me fine with going from one to the other on a "most strongly support" answer choice.

Hope this helps.

[jimmy902o]

Thanks ohthatpatrick this definitely clears things up. It looks like I read a little to much into Zachary’s statement than I should have, and didn’t focus enough on Stephens. Also, it always seems to be those tiny modifiers that I miss and cause me so much trouble. I will try to pay more attention to them in the future