PrepTest 154

Incorrect. This doesn't seem relevant. One would expect people in a battle scene to be of similar ages. Not too many grandpas on the battlefield even in Renaissance times.

Incorrect. This might actually strengthen, if every other figure is some famous person from history. That would make the figure of the young artist the only thing that stands out as unusual, since he wasn't famous yet when he painted this. If he's the one figure that doesn't fit with the rule then there must be some special reason to include him . . . like, say, he painted it.

Incorrect. This is a very tempting trap answer, since it suggests that maybe the young painter modeled for an experienced painter who then painted him into the battle scene. But, there's one issue: logical force. "Not uncommon" is very weak. This might work if it said "All Renaissance painters used live models for all human figures in their paintings," or "All older Renaissance painters used younger artists as live models for their paintings."

Correct. Argument or Facts:
Argument

Valid or Flawed:
Flawed

Question Type:
Weaken

Stimulus Summary:
Historians previously didn't know who painted a Renaissance battle scene involving loads of aristocrats, but they've solved the mystery. An artist painted a self portrait in the same year as the battle scene, and his appearance in the self portrait is very similar to one of the figures in the battle scene. So, he probably painted both.

Answer Anticipation:
Hang on, are we assuming that there were no similar-looking people in the Renaissance era? Or that nobody else could have painted the same guy in a similar way to how he painted himself? Just the presence of one similar-looking figure in the painting doesn't seem like very strong evidence for historians to determine that the same painter is responsible for both paintings. We're probably looking to weaken the conditional relationship between "similar figure in both paintings" and "then it must have been the same painter."

Answer Explanation:
This isn't the strongest Weaken answer of all time by a long shot, but it works. He was a young, struggling painter, so he probably wouldn't have committed a major breach of etiquette, at least not in painting a work the artist presumably hoped to sell.

Key Takeaway:
Remember, Weaken is not "Disprove." We don't actually have to make the argument invalid to correctly answer a Weaken question. We just need to nudge it a little farther away from validity, which (D) does.

Incorrect. This would actually strengthen as well. If the battle took place long before the artist's birth, then he couldn't just have been included in the painting by some other painter because he actually participated in the battle. That makes it all the more likely he included himself because he painted it.