An original GRE Verbal practice test on art history — 5 Text Completion, 5 Sentence Equivalence, and 10 Reading Comprehension questions, 20 questions in 30 minutes.

শিল্প ইতিহাস বিষয়ক একটি মৌলিক GRE ভার্বাল প্র্যাকটিস টেস্ট।

30min
Timeসময়
20
Questionsপ্রশ্ন
130–170
Scaled Scoreস্কোর

How to use it: Start the timer, complete all sections, then check your answers.

ব্যবহারের নিয়ম: টাইমার শুরু করে সব সেকশন শেষ করুন।

30:00
Text Completion

Questions 1–5.

1 The painting's attribution had long been , with scholars divided over whether it was the master's own work or that of an assistant.

2 Far from being universally admired at its debut, the painting was initially by critics who found its loose brushwork unfinished-looking.

3 The restoration was (i) , requiring conservators to (ii) remove centuries of accumulated varnish without damaging the paint beneath.

4 The artist's later works mark a decisive break from the style of her early career, embracing pure color and form over recognizable subject matter.

5 The sculpture's provenance remains , with no clear paper trail connecting it to its supposed original owner.

Sentence Equivalence

Questions 6–10. Select the TWO correct answer choices.

6 The museum's new wing was widely praised as ______, a striking departure from the bland institutional architecture typical of the era.

7 The forger's technique was so ______ that even expert appraisers were fooled for over a decade.

8 The critic's essay was ______ in its praise, comparing the exhibition favorably to only the greatest works in the museum's permanent collection.

9 The artist's technique, though ______ by later standards, was considered revolutionary in its own historical moment.

10 The gallery's new curator was praised for her ______ eye, assembling exhibitions that consistently anticipated shifts in critical taste.

Reading Comprehension — Passage 1

Questions 11–15 are based on the passage below.

Attribution disputes in art history — disagreements over whether a given work was produced by a named master, a workshop assistant, or a later imitator — have grown increasingly technical as scientific analysis has supplemented traditional connoisseurship, the practice of expert visual judgment honed through years of studying an artist's characteristic brushwork and composition. Infrared reflectography can reveal underdrawings invisible to the naked eye, sometimes exposing revisions that suggest a master's hand at work refining a composition, or conversely a mechanical, unrevised copying process more typical of a workshop assistant. Pigment analysis can date a painting by identifying compounds not available until a certain historical period, occasionally exposing forgeries whose pigments postdate the purported artist's death by centuries. Yet these scientific tools, for all their precision, have not eliminated the role of connoisseurship entirely; technical analysis can establish when and sometimes how a painting was made, but questions of attribution ultimately still require expert judgment about whether the quality and style of execution are consistent with a specific artist's known body of work, a judgment that remains irreducibly interpretive even when informed by the best available scientific evidence. The most contentious attribution cases, accordingly, tend to arise not from disputes over the scientific data but from disagreements about how to weigh that data against connoisseurs' sometimes conflicting stylistic judgments.

📚 Glossary · কঠিন শব্দের অর্থ
Wordবাংলা অর্থEnglish meaning
connoisseurshipরসবোধ-দক্ষতাexpert judgment based on trained taste and experience
underdrawingনিম্নরেখাa preliminary sketch beneath the visible paint
irreduciblyঅপরিবর্তনীয়ভাবেin a way that cannot be simplified further

11 The primary purpose of the passage is to

12 According to the passage, pigment analysis can expose forgeries by

13 The passage suggests that the most contentious attribution cases arise from

14 Select all statements the passage would support. (Select all that apply.)

15 The word "irreducibly" in the passage most nearly means

Reading Comprehension — Passage 2

Questions 16–20 are based on the passage below.

When Impressionist paintings were first exhibited in Paris in 1874, the visible, unblended brushstrokes and everyday subject matter that now define the movement's appeal struck contemporary critics as evidence of technical incompetence rather than deliberate innovation; one hostile review, mocking the group's rejection of polished academic finish, gave the movement its now-celebrated name, originally intended as an insult. This pattern — innovation initially condemned as failure, later canonized as genius — recurs with striking regularity throughout art history, prompting some historians to argue that shock or discomfort in a contemporary audience may itself be an unreliable but historically consistent marker of genuine innovation, since truly novel work by definition violates the expectations trained into audiences by the art that preceded it. Other historians resist drawing too strong a lesson from this pattern, cautioning that for every once-ridiculed movement later vindicated by history, countless other genuinely mediocre works were also ridiculed in their own time and have, appropriately, remained forgotten; contemporary rejection, in other words, is a poor predictor of eventual merit precisely because it fails to distinguish between innovations later recognized as valuable and works that were simply unsuccessful in ways contemporary critics correctly identified. The retrospective narrative of misunderstood genius, these skeptics suggest, may say less about any general pattern than about which stories happen to be retold once the innovations in question are retroactively validated by later taste.

📚 Glossary · কঠিন শব্দের অর্থ
Wordবাংলা অর্থEnglish meaning
canonizeস্বীকৃতি দেওয়া (শ্রেষ্ঠত্বের)to officially recognize as important or excellent
vindicateসমর্থন/প্রমাণ করাto show that something was justified after doubt
retrospectiveঅতীতমুখীlooking back on past events

16 The primary purpose of the passage is to

17 According to the passage, the term "Impressionism" originated as

18 The skeptical historians mentioned in the passage argue that contemporary rejection is a poor predictor of merit because

19 Select all statements the passage would support. (Select all that apply.)

20 The passage's overall structure can best be described as