Text 1
For decades, art historians maintained that the famous Roman sculptor Marcus Aurelius exclusively used local Italian marble for his creations. Scholars pointed to the chemical composition of his most celebrated imperial busts, which consistently matched stone from quarries in Carrara, Italy. They concluded that ancient workshops rarely relied on imported materials due to the immense difficulties and high costs of transporting heavy stone over long distances.
Text 2
Geologist Elena Vance recently analyzed several lesser-known sculptures attributed to Marcus Aurelius that are currently housed in private European collections. Vance discovered that these specific sculptures were actually carved from marble quarried in Greece. This discovery suggests that Aurelius's workshop was actively connected to a vast Mediterranean trade network, meaning that the workshop did not restrict its material selection solely to local Italian quarries.
Based on the texts, how would Vance (Text 2) most likely respond to the conclusion of the art historians in Text 1?
- ABy agreeing that Roman workshops rarely imported stone and arguing that Greek marble was only used for non-imperial sculptures.
- BBy suggesting that Marcus Aurelius did not actually carve the Greek marble sculptures himself but left them to his assistants.
- By pointing out that some sculptures attributed to Marcus Aurelius were made of marble from Greece, demonstrating that his workshop did use imported materials.Cevap
- DBy asserting that the chemical analysis of the Carrara marble in the imperial busts was inaccurate.