Ⅰ．Each of the passages is followed by some questions. For each
question four answers are given. Read the passages carefully and choose the best
answer to each question.
The history of responds to the work of the artist Sandro Botticelli
(1444--1510) suggests that widespread appreciation by critics is a relatively
recent phenomenon. Writing in 1550, Vasari expressed an unease with Botticelli’s
work, admitting that the artist fitted awkwardly into his evolutionary scheme of
the history of art. Over the next two centuries, academic art historians defamed
Botticelli in favor of his fellows Florentine, Michelangelo. Even when
anti-academic art historians of the early nineteenth century rejected many of
the standards of evaluation adopted by their predecessors, Botticelli’s work
remained outside of accepted taste, pleasing neither amateur observers nor
connoisseurs. (Many of his best paintings, however, remained hidden away in
obscure churches and private homes.) The primary reason for
Botticelli’s unpopularity is not difficult to understand: most observers, up
until the mid-nineteenth century, did not consider him to be noteworthy, because
his work, for the most part, did not seem to these observers to exhibit the
traditional characteristics of fifteenth-century Florentine art. For example,
Botticelli rarely employed the technique of strict perspective and, unlike
Michelangelo, never used chiaroscuro. Another reason for
Botticelli’s unpopularity may have been that his attitude toward the style of
classical art was very different from that of his contemporaries. Although he
was thoroughly exposed to classical art, he showed little interest in borrowing
from the classical style. Indeed, it is paradoxical that a painter of
large-scale classical subjects adopted a style that was only slightly similar to
that of classical art. In any case, when viewers began to
examine more closely the relationship of Botticelli’s work to the tradition of
fifteenth-century Florentine art, his reputation began to grow. Analyses and
assessments of Botticelli made between 1850 and 1870 by the artists of the
Pre-Raphaelite movement, as well as by the writer Pater (although he,
unfortunately, based his assessment on an incorrect analysis of Botticelli’s
personality), inspired a new appreciation of Botticelli throughout the
English-speaking world. Yet Botticelli’s work, especially the Sistine frescoes,
did not generate worldwide attention until it was finally subjected to a
comprehensive and scrupulous analysis by Home in 1908. Home rightly demonstrated
that the frescoes shared important features with paintings by other
fifteenth-century Florentines--features such as skillful representation of
anatomical proportions, and of the human figure in motion. However, Home argued
that Botticelli did not treat these qualities as ends in themselves--rather,
that he emphasized clear depletion of a story, a unique achievement and one that
made the traditional Florentine qualities less central. Because of Home’s
emphasis crucial to any study of art, the twentieth century has come to
appreciate Botticelli’s achievements. Which of the following would be the best title for the text’