Cambridge 10 | Test 2 | Passage 3

Museums of Fine Art

If Mona Lisa was a famous novel, few people would bother to go to a museum to read the writer’s actual manuscript rather than a printed reproduction. This might be explained by the fact that the novel has evolved precisely because of technological developments that made it possible to print out huge numbers of texts, whereas oil paintings have always been produced as unique objects. In addition, it could be argued that the practice of interpreting or “reading” each medium follows different conventions. With novels, the reader attends mainly to the meaning of words rather than the way they are printed on the page, whereas the “reader” of a painting must attend just as closely to the material form of marks and shapes in the picture as to any ideas they may signify.

manuscript (noun) [C]

the original copy of a book or article before it is printed

medium (noun) [C]

a method or way of expressing something

convention (noun) [C, UNC]

the way in which something is done that most people in a society expect and consider to be polite or the right way to do it