LR Question 16 Explanation
QUESTION TEXT: Most commentators on Baroque painting…
QUESTION TYPE: Sufficient Assumption
CONCLUSION: Either the commentators are wrong, or Mather’s definition of Baroque is wrong.
REASONING: The commentators think Caravaggio was Baroque. Mather thinks Baroque paintings must be opulent, extravagant, with heroic sweep.
ANALYSIS: This argument makes a really big error. The author never said whether Caravaggio’s paintings had opulence, extravagance and heroic sweep! If Caravaggio had all those things, then the commentators could be right in classifying him as Baroque, and this would match Mather’s definition. To prove that either the commentators or Mather are wrong, we need to show that Caravaggio’s paintings lacked those qualities.
Note that E is pretty obviously correct. The first four answers are designed to confuse you and slow you down so you waste 30 seconds before you even read E. Look over all of the answers first before considering any of them at length.
___________
- This answer doesn’t apply to the stimulus. We don’t care what’s typically true. We only care about the specific attributes Mather mentioned, and whether Caravaggio’s paintings had them.
This is a useless, wishy-washy answer. The only purpose of an answer like this is to slow you down and keep you from seeing that E is obviously correct. - The stimulus isn’t about how to define a realistic painting. This answer can’t lead to the conclusion. This is just here to confuse you.
- The past doesn’t matter. This argument is only talking about Caravaggio, and Baroque, which was in Caravaggio’s future.
- This is close, but we don’t care what “usually” happens in realistic paintings. Caravaggio’s paintings might have been unusual in that they were both realistic but also heroic, opulent and extravagant.
- CORRECT. If this is true, then the paintings aren’t Baroque, according to Mather. Yet the commentators say Caravaggio was Baroque. So either they or Mather are wrong.
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Does answer choice D also have the mistake of saying “depict the world as opulent, heroic, or extravagant”? They are just three characteristics of Baroque paintings, not necessarily depictions of “the world”.
This is an interesting point, but the final sentence of the stimulus does say that to meet Mather’s definition, the paintings must “display opulence, heroic sweep, and extravagance.” For your point to be true, you’d need to come up with a scenario where a painting could display opulence, heroic sweep, and extravagance, without “depicting the world” as opulent, heroic, or extravagant, which would require a lot of mental gymnastics and perhaps a very specific definition of “world”.
If you find yourself needing to make such jumps on the LSAT, there’s likely a much more glaring issue that an answer is correct or incorrect (as in this case), and it’s better to focus on finding those issues instead.