中国大学MOOC: II Read the following passage, and choose the best answerThe Caravaggio MysteryItalian painter Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610), usually known simply as “Caravaggio,” had a dramatic life, of which parts remain mysterious to scholars even today. Why, then, would it be a surprise that mysteries also surround his work? For example, The Taking of Christ, one of his paintings that had been considered lost since the eighteenth century, was rediscovered in 1990. It had hung, seemingly unrecognized, in the dining room of the Society of the Jesuits in Dublin, Ireland, for more than fifty years. The discovery that the painting was, indeed, a Caravaggio, led many to wonder how such a treasure could be hidden—seemingly in plain sight.The first clue historians have about The Taking of Christ is in the 1603 accounts of an Italian nobleman, Ciriaco Mattei, who paid 125 “scudi” for “a painting with its frame of Christ taken in the garden.” At the time, Caravaggio’s style, with its striking use of light and dark, was admired and often imitated by both students and fellow artists. However, trends in the art world come and go, and two centuries later, Caravaggio’s work had fallen out of favor with collectors. In fact, it wouldn’t be until the 1950s that a Caravaggio “renaissance” occurred, and interest in the artist was renewed.In the meantime, The Taking of Christ had traveled far and wide. Ironically, it was the Mattei family itself that originally misidentified the work, though several centuries after the original purchase. In 1802, the family sold it as a Honthorst to a Scottish collector. This collector kept it in his home until his death in 1921. By 1921, The Taking of Christ—now firmly attributed to Gerard van Honthorst—was auctioned off in Edinburgh for eight guineas. This would have probably been a fair price if the work had been a van Honthorst; for a true Caravaggio, though, it was the bargain of the century. An Irish doctor bought the painting and donated it to the Dublin Jesuit Society the following decade.From the 1930s onward, The Taking of Christ hung in the offices of the Dublin Jesuits. However, the Jesuits, who had a number of old paintings in their possession, decided to bring in a conservator to discuss restoring them in the early 1990s. Sergio Benedetti, the Senior Conservator at the National Gallery of Ireland, went to the building to examine the paintings and oversee their restoration. Decades of dirt, including smoke from the fireplace above which it hung, had to be removed from the painting before Benedetti began to suspect that the painting was not a copy of the original, but the original itself.Two graduate students from the University of Rome, Francesca Cappelletti and Laura Testa, were primarily responsible for verifying that Caravaggio did, in fact, create this version of the painting. Over years of research, they found the 1603 Mattei accounts. The verification of the painting, though, went far beyond this circumstantial evidence. Certifying that a painting came from a certain artist’s hand is not easy, though forensic science that wouldn’t have been available in the 1920s helped to attribute the work to Caravaggio definitively. The canvas underwent a number of treatments. It was X-rayed and scanned with an infrared light. The cracks on the surface of the painting (known in the industry as “craquelure”) were studied. Furthermore, The Taking of Christ underwent much analysis by art historians, who studied the form and color in the painting to determine its authenticity. For example, Caravaggio never used sketches to set up the composition of his paintings. Instead, he made marks with the end of his brush as he painted—marks that can still be visible today.Of course, the verification of the painting required entire teams of people, in addition to the three mentioned above, and took years. By 1993, the announcement was finally made that the long-lost Caravaggio had been found. Rather than sell the painting, which is most likely worth millions of dollars, the Jesuits decided to make it available to the nation of Ireland for viewing. Thus, the painting is on “indefinite loan” to the National Gallery of Ireland. Nevertheless, the painting continues its travels as it features in exhibitions around the world, from the United States to Amsterdam. In 2010, it even travelled back to Rome to be displayed for the 400th anniversary of the painter’s death. A fitting tribute, many would say, to a mysterious master.( ) Which of the sentences below best expresses the essential information in the highlighted sentence in paragraph 6? Why?

Read the following passages and complete the exercises below: A Van Gogh’s Trip from the Attic to the Museum Amsterdam—For roughly a century, the painting Sunset at Montmajour was considered a fake. It was stored in an attic and then held in a private collection, unknown to the public and dismissed by art historians. But on Monday, the Van Gogh Museum declared the work a genuine product of the master, calling it a major discovery. Sunset at Montmajour, painted in Arles in 1888, “is a work from the most important period of his life, when he created his substantial masterpieces, like sunflowers, The Yellow House and The Bedroom”, said the museum’s director, Axel Ruger, in an interview. The painting depicts dusk in the hilly, forested landscape of Montmajour, in Provence, with wheat fields and the ruins of a Benedictine abbey in the distance. The area around Montmajour was a subject that van Gogh revisited often during his time in Arles. “Once or two early van Goghs do sometimes come out of the woodwork now and again, but from the mature period, it’s very rare.” Said James Roundell, and art dealer and the director of modern pictures for the Dickinson galleries in London and New York, which deals in Impressionist and modern art. Mr. Roundell said it would be hard to predict precisely how much Sunset at Montmajour would fetch on the market, but expected it would be “ in the tends of millions and quite a few of them”. He added. “It’s not the iconic status of something like the Sunflower , or the Portrait of Dr. Gachet. ”which sold at an auction for $ 82.5 million in 1990. Fred Leeman, a former chief curator of the museum and now an independent art historian and van Gogh scholar based here. Said the work, which he called “100 percent genuine”, contributes to an alternative understanding of the artist.” We have the impression of van Gogh as a very modern painter, but he’s working in the tradition of 19 th -century landscape painting.” He said. The painting has been in the collection of family for several years, and Mr. Ruger said that because of privacy concerns, he couldn’t release any more information about the owners. Until 1901, the painting was in the collection once owned by van Gogh’s brother. Theo, said Marije Vellekoop, the head of collections, research and presentation for the museum. His widow, Johanna van Gogh-Bonger, sold it to a Paris art dealer. In 1908, the art dealer sold it to a Norwegian collector, Ms. Vellekoop said. Shortly after that, she added, “it was declared a fake, or not an original”, and the Norwegian collector banished it to his attic, where it stayed until he died in 1970. The current owners purchased it thereafter. They took it to the Van Gogh Museum in 1991, Mr. Ruger said, but at the time, experts there said they did not think it was authentic. Two years ago, the owners took it back to the museum, and researchers from the museum have been examining it ever since, Mr. Ruger said. Louis van Tilborgh, the museum’s senior researcher, said that since 1991, the museum has developed several new techniques for identifying and authenticating works of art. He said that all those methods were put to use when researchers had the chance to look at this painting again. According to Mr. van Tiborgh, it was painted on the same type of canvas with the same type of underpainting van Gogh used for at least one other painting of the same area, The Rocks. The work was also listed as part of Theo van Gogh’s collection in 1890. It has “180” painted on the back, which corresponds to the number in the collection inventory. “That was the clincher,” he said. Mr. Ruger added: “This time, we have topographical information, plus a number of other factors that have helped us to establish authenticity. Research is so much more advanced now, so we could come to a very different conclusion.” The last major van Gogh brought to light, the museum said, was the 1888 painting Tarascon Stagecoach, in the 1930s. The date of Sunset at Montmajour has been identified as July 4, 1888. In a letter van Gogh wrote to his brother the next day, he seemed to have described the scene: Yesterday, at sunset, I was on a stony heath, where very small, twisted oaks grow, in the background a ruin on the hill and wheat fields in the valley. It was romantic, it couldn’t be more so, a la Monticelli, the sun was pouring its very yellow rays over the bushes and the ground, absolutely a shower of gold. And all the lines were beautiful; the whole scene had charming nobility.” (He was referring to the works of Adolphe Monticelli, one of the first painters van Gogh admired when he moved to Pairs in 1886, and who played a role in van Gogh’s to move to Provence.) Sunset at Montmajou is comparable in size to Sunflowers, which was painted the same year and sold for $ 39.9 million in 1987 at an auction at Christie’s in London. Van Gogh moved to Arles in February 1888 and spent time exploring the landscapes in Provence, and doing work “en plein air”, or in nature. He was particularly fascinated by the flat landscape around the hill of Montmajour, with its rocky outcropping and hay-colored fields. In a letter dated July 1888, he said that he had been to Montmajour, at least 30 times “to see the view over the plain”. Mr. Leeman, the historian, said that “in hindsight, many pointers in his letters and entries in catalogs of the 1900s have been linked to other paintings or misidentified.” Adding, “Here, we see a painting that fits those descriptions exactly.” The painting will be on view at the museum for one year, starting on Sept. 24, as part of the current exhibition, “ Van Gogh at work”, which focuses on other new discoveries about the painter’s artistic development. Mr Ruger said the current owners have not indicated what they intend to do with it after that. Fill in each blank with one word from a list of choices given in a word bank following the passage. Sunset at Montmajou, a 1) _____________ of trees and sky in the south of France in van Gogh’s familiar thick brush strokes, was painted in 1888 but had been lying in the 2) ______________of a 3)___________collector who brought the painting in 1908 because it was 4)_______________as a 5)___________. The painting was unveiled at the Van Gogh Museum in 6) ____________ on Monday, with Axel Ruger, the 7) __________, describing it as a “Once in a life time experience”. The painting was 8) ____________based on comparisons with van Gogh’s 9) ____________ and a letter he wrote in which he described the painting. It could be 10) ____________to the exact day it was painted because Vincent described it in a letter to his brother. Then, and said he painted it the previous day — July 4, 1888. A) dismissed F) landscape K ） director B) dated G) genuine L ） banished C) authenticated H) techniques M) curator D) fake I) portrait N) Amsterdam E) Norwegian J) attic O) Paris