Cosimo de’ Medici, a great patron of the arts, sponsoring two of Dona

Question

Cosimo de’ Medici, a great patron of the arts, sponsoring two of Donatello's most famous works, statues of David and Judith, while supporting Brunelleschi to complete the dome of the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, which is known to be "Duomo."

(A) Cosimo de’ Medici, a great patron of the arts, sponsoring two of Donatello's most famous works, statues of David and Judith, while supporting Brunelleschi to complete the dome of the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, which is known to be

(B) Cosimo de’ Medici was a great patron of the arts, sponsoring two of Donatello's most famous works, statues of David and Judith, and supporting Brunelleschi in completing the dome of the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, known as

(C) Cosimo de’ Medici, a great patron of the arts, sponsored both of Donatello's most famous works, a statue of David and a statue of Judith, and supporting Brunelleschi when he completed the dome of the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, that is known as

(D) Cosimo de’ Medici, a great patron of the arts, sponsoring the most famous two Donatello works, statues of David and Judith, he supported Brunelleschi in completing the dome of the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, known by

(E) Cosimo de’ Medici was a great patron of the arts, sponsored both of Donatello most famous works, statues of David and Judith, and he supported Brunelleschi when he completed the dome of the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, known as

The GMAT loves Nested Grammatical Structures --- that is one structure packed inside another. These produce very long sentences, and long SC questions, such as the one above. For a discussion of these structures, as well as the OE for this particular question, see:
https://magoosh.com/gmat/2014/nested-gr ... orrection/

Mike

mikemcgarry · Accepted Answer

Cosimo de’ Medici, a great patron of the arts, sponsoring two of Donatello's most famous works, statues of David and Judith, while supporting Brunelleschi to complete the dome of the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, which is known to be "Duomo."

(A) Cosimo de’ Medici, a great patron of the arts, sponsoring two of Donatello's most famous works, statues of David and Judith, while supporting Brunelleschi to complete the dome of the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, which is known to be

(B) Cosimo de’ Medici was a great patron of the arts, sponsoring two of Donatello's most famous works, statues of David and Judith, and supporting Brunelleschi in completing the dome of the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, known as

(C) Cosimo de’ Medici, a great patron of the arts, sponsored both of Donatello's most famous works, a statue of David and a statue of Judith, and supporting Brunelleschi when he completed the dome of the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, that is known as

(D) Cosimo de’ Medici, a great patron of the arts, sponsoring the most famous two Donatello works, statues of David and Judith, he supported Brunelleschi in completing the dome of the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, known by

(E) Cosimo de’ Medici was a great patron of the arts, sponsored both of Donatello most famous works, statues of David and Judith, and he supported Brunelleschi when he completed the dome of the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, known as

The GMAT loves Nested Grammatical Structures --- that is one structure packed inside another. These produce very long sentences, and long SC questions, such as the one above. For a discussion of these structures, as well as the OE for this particular question, see:
https://magoosh.com/gmat/2014/nested-gr ... orrection/

Mike

Show Answer

Official Answer

B

mikemcgarry · Answer

Dear sobby , I'm happy to respond. :-)

First of all, my friend, I would strongly recommend learning the correct names of the modifiers. There is a side of grammar that is very precise, and part of understanding that precision includes using the precise names. 1) What you call the -ing modifier is the present participle . 2) What you call the -ed modifier is the past participle . You can read about these in this blog about participles . The answer to your question is no. The sentence would be 100% incorrect with the change you suggest. You see, the present participle is an active participle, while the past participle is a passive participle. 3) The man cooking the stew said XYZ . In #3, the present participle " cooking " modifies " man ," and the man is the person performing the action of cooking. 4) The stew, cooked in a crock pot for eight hours, tastes delicious . In #4, the past participle " cooked " modifies " stew ," and the stew is the passive recipient of the action of cooking. In (B), the two active participles, " sponsoring " and " supporting ," apply to the subject. The passive participles " sponsored " and " supported " would apply, not to the subject & actor Cosimo de' Medici , but to the recipients of the action. Using the passive participles would require a complete reorganization of the sentence. Rather than using the past tense forms as participles, we could insert a pronoun subject and change them to past tense verbs. This would produce a new clause, so to avoid a run-on sentence, we would have to use a colon or semicolon. Cosimo de’ Medici was a great patron of the arts: he sponsored two of Donatello's most famous works, statues of David and Judith, and he supported Brunelleschi in completing the dome of the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, known as "Duomo." That version is perfectly correct. Does all this make sense? Mike :-)

Yash26 · Answer

Hi Mike,

This is a very good question. Really nested structure. I managed to mark the correct answer, although "sponsored" in C tempted a lot but "and supporting" helped me eliminate this choice. Choices A & E can be straight away rejected because of their non-grammatical construction. D changes the meaning. B is what I believe the correct construction and conveys the intended meaning. In B, parts after the opening clause "Cosimo de’ Medici was a great patron of the arts" completely modify this opening clause and do nothing else, making the sentence correct.

Please let me know if my understanding is correct?

I am not sure why this question is labeled sub 600.

Regards
Yash

mikemcgarry · Answer

Dear Yash, I'm happy to respond. :-)

Yes, (B) is the OA. I would agree with most of what you said, but I would say that technically, (E) is grammatically correct but rhetorically flawed: it's an example of "automatic pilot parallelism," in which every verb is automatically put in parallel with everything else irrespective of meaning. And yes, you are correct about (B). The independent clause is simply " Cosimo de’ Medici was a great patron of the arts ," and the whole rest of the sentence consists of two gigantic participial phrases in parallel: " sponsoring . . . and supporting . . . " The first participial phrase has an appositive phrase nested inside of it, and the second one has another participial phrase nested inside it. Notice that the tag is 600-700 . I would agree it's not sub 600, but whether it is in the 600-700 range or 700+ is anyone's guess. Actually, I am deeply suspicious of this entire enterprise of assigning "score values" to individual questions. See this blog article: Is this a 700+ level GMAT question? Does all this make sense? Mike :-)

warriorguy · Answer

Hi Mike,

Is the line of reasoning correct?

known as better as compared to  known to be  v/s  that is known as   v/s  known by

(A) Cosimo de’ Medici, a great patron of the arts, sponsoring two of Donatello's most famous works, statues of David and Judith,  while  supporting Brunelleschi to complete the dome of the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, which is  known to be

(B) Cosimo de’ Medici was a great patron of the arts,  sponsoring  two of Donatello's most famous works, statues of David and Judith, and  supporting  Brunelleschi in completing the dome of the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore,  known as

(C) Cosimo de’ Medici, a great patron of the arts,  sponsored  both of Donatello's most famous works, a statue of David and a statue of Judith, and  supporting  Brunelleschi when he completed the dome of the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore,  that is known as

(D) Cosimo de’ Medici, a great patron of the arts, sponsoring  the most famous two Donatello works , statues of David and Judith , he  supported Brunelleschi in completing the dome of the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore,  known by

(E) Cosimo de’ Medici was a great patron of the arts, sponsored  both of Donatello most famous works , statues of David and Judith, and he supported Brunelleschi when  he  completed the dome of the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, known as

Animatzer · Answer

A) verb is missing ..and known to be doesn't make sense

B) verb 'was' is correctly used and known as is rightly used

C) sponsored is past tense while supporting is continuous tense ..tense usage error

D)same problem as C

E) fragment

sobby · Answer

A--missing Verb
B--looks good.
C-llism issue.
D--Missing Verb for main subject(Cosimo de' Medici).
E--He --Pronoun ambiguity

for me it is B..

Nice post Mike.

mikemcgarry  , i have a question:

if we replace ing modifier with ed- modifier in B...

Cosimo de’ Medici was a great patron of the arts,  sponsored  two of Donatello's most famous works, statues of David and Judith, and  supported  Brunelleschi in completing the dome of the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, known as

Is this sentence correct...?

I think this sentence is correct grammatically..but it is kind of false llism ...making every sentence parallel but in main sentence emphasis is more given on "Cosimo de' Medici was a great patron of the arts"..then extending to his all support and works....

Is my understanding correct.?

shiv17 · Answer

In the option B 
As comma is followed by -ing modifier it is a adverbial modifier.
As a adverbial modifier it explains both of the events happening at once.
Pls clarify option B. 
request you to correct me if i'm wrong

MikeHelios · Answer

my final choices were B and E.
i went with B as the second 'he' in E was ambiguous and the support from Medici was after Donatello completed his work, which also seemed wrong.

daagh · Answer

Two things about E

1. The first IC seems to have two verbs namely 'was' and sponsored and the second IC has one verb 'supported.' If this was meant to be a compound sentence, then the first IC seems to lack the customary 'and' between the two verbs. Also, was is a linking verb and supported is an action verb; It is doubtful whether we can parallelize a linking verb with an action verb.

2. The original text says that Cosimo sponsored two of the Donatello's most famous works and while E distorts the original context by saying that he sponsored both of his famous works as if Donatallo produced only two famous works.

Therefore, E is flawed.

aragonn · Answer

Official Explanation 
The subject of this question is the great Cosimo de' Medici, and mentions the great artists Donatello and Brunelleschi.

We need a full verb, and somehow the verbs "support" & "sponsor" need to be in parallel.

(A) de' Medici … sponsoring … while supporting …

This one commits the famous "missing verb" mistake. It is incorrect.

(B) de' Medici was… sponsoring … while supporting …

Correct.

(C) This one is grammatically correct and logically incorrect. This changes the meaning by suggest that Cosimo de-Medici sponsored Donatello in order to sponsor Brunelleschi, that it was necessary to sponsor one man in order to sponsor the other. This is a very different meaning from the prompt. This is not correct.

(D) de' Medici … sponsoring … he supported …

This one commits the double-subject mistake.

(E) de' Medici was… sponsored … and he supported … This is incorrect.

This is a variant of the double-subject mistake:   ,  , "and"   . This is incorrect.

The only possible answer is (B).

sandysilva · Answer

Hi Mike. Thanks for posting these awesome questions and articles.
Can you please help me know whether the mentioned version of D is correct?
 Sponsoring the most famous two Donatello works, statues of David and Judith, Cosimo de’ Medici, a great patron of the arts, supported Brunelleschi in completing the dome of the cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore, known by

AKY13 · Answer

Hi Mike, 
The OA is constructed as below - 
 The man said XYZ, cooking the stew.  
Is that acceptable.

CDM was great patron, sponsoring ......, & supporting ......

Seems odd to me - a non native speaker.

AKSU2020 · Answer

Use of verb-ing to give an example or examples is a nuance. Usually a verb-ing at the end of a clause expresses the outcome of the action in the main clause, but in the case above verb-ing modifies "a great patron of arts" by giving example.

kinshuk97gupta · Answer

I was able to eliminate all the wrong answers but in initially I thought option B was wrong too because "and supporting ....." doesn't seem a complete statement. And technically 'comma + and' must be a complete statement. Can you clear this doubt?
Thank you

VerbalBot · Answer

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Cosimo de’ Medici, a great patron of the arts, sponsoring two of Dona

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Cosimo de’ Medici, a great patron of the arts, sponsoring two of Dona

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