Michelangelo, it is believed, had made his sculpture of David using an

GMATNinja

Hi,

Wanted to clarify whether the use of "it" in option is A is correct ?

Michelangelo, it is believed, had made his sculpture of David using an eight-inch plaster model that was recently discovered after being* lost for nearly 300 years.

A) Michelangelo, it is believed, had made his sculpture of David using an eight-inch plaster model that was recently discovered after being ---The missing comma after David is a problem in this choice. Perse, it means that his sculpture of David used an eight-inch plaster model and not Michelangelo.

B) An eight-inch plaster model is believed to have been used by Michelangelo for his sculpture of David and recently discovered after it was --Structural Parallelism is the casualty after the parallelism marker ‘and’

C) An eight-inch plaster model believed to have been used by Michelangelo for his sculpture of David has been discovered after having been --- This is the correct choice in spite of the clumsiness

D) It is believed that an eight-inch plaster model that Michelangelo used for his sculpture of David and has recently been discovered after it was -- dual reference of it is ungrammatical. The first ‘it’ is a place-holder and the second one refers to the plastic model.

E) It is believed that Michelangelo used an eight-inch plaster model for his sculpture of David, and it was recently discovered after having been--- -- dual reference of it is ungrammatical. The first ‘it’ is a place-holder and the second one refers to the plastic model.

Can you please elaborate why B is wrong?

An eight inch plaster model is believed.... And discovered ....

Which means Eight inch plaster model is believed..... And Eight inch plaster model is discovered

Yes, I would say you have it now, through and through. Now let the dust settle on this one and see if you can apply your newfound knowledge to the next set of questions. Well done.

- Andrew

This passive construction is admittedly a bit confusing, so let's try to work our way up to it:

• "The model is used by Michelangelo." - This sentence uses the passive voice: the subject ("model") receives the action.
• "The model is believed to be used by Michelangelo." - This is similar to the first one, except here we aren't sure whether the model is used by Michelangelo -- we only believe or think that it was.

Not too bad, right? But things get a bit more confusing once we change the timing:

• "The model was used by Michelangelo." - Here we know that the model was used by Michelangelo at some point in the past.
• "The model is believed to have been used by Michelangelo." - In the second example above, we were talking about something that we believe that Michelangelo currently does. But now we are talking about something that we think was done at some uncertain time frame in the past. We use "believed to have been" instead of "believed to be" in this case. This is basically what we have in (B).
• "The model believed to have been used by Michelangelo..." - This is basically what we have in (C). It's the same idea as the last one, except that now "believed..." is an -ed modifier. Again, the only real difference between "believed to be" and "believe to have been" is the timing of Michelangelo's supposed action (using the model).

Luckily, this construction doesn't come up all that much in official questions, and learning the ins and outs of this particular construction is probably not the best use of your time. Don’t overreact to this sort of thing -- when in doubt, look for other decision points.

I hope that helps!

I was deciding between (A) and (C) and these points made me choose (C) over (A).

A) Michelangelo, it is believed, had made his sculpture of David using an eight-inch plaster model that was recently discovered after being

"using ..." is a present participle and when it is used without a comma after a noun, it modifies the noun.
Present participle can be used at the end of the sentence to modify the entire previous clause with a comma. So there is that problem.
It seems that David was using the eight-inch plaster model.

Another problem, and one that seemed to be a bigger problem to me - the point of the sentence is not to tell you that M made his sculpture using a model (that has now been found), the point is to tell you that a model (that is believed to have been used by M) has been found. The critical information is tucked away in a modifier in option (A).
Also, here it seems that it was known that M had made David using the model and it is just additional info that the model has been found recently. Whereas, it seems more likely that the model was found and that is what gave the idea that M must have used it to make David.


C) An eight-inch plaster model believed to have been used by Michelangelo for his sculpture of David has been discovered after having been

Rectifies all our issues with (A).

It seems there are some questions about (D) too.

D) It is believed that an eight-inch plaster model that Michelangelo used for his sculpture of David and has recently been discovered after it was

It is believed that ... a model (that M used) ... and has been discovered ...
It is missing the verb of subject model.

Hi VeritasKarishma

Although I choose C, as it was better then all the other options, but I have a doubt, shouldn't it be, An ceight-inch plaster model "was" believed ?

As "An eight-inch plaster model" is not doing the action of belief?

Michelangelo, it is believed, had made his sculpture of David using an eight-inch plaster model that was recently discovered after being lost for nearly 300 years.