Q14Comprehension2 Marks10 May 2026
Passage
Read the conversation given below and fill in the blanks with the appropriate discourse markers. Observe the tone and the punctuation of the passage and choose only the most fitting answer for every blank. Two Art Inspectors Visit Scone Palace to Study an Intriguing Portrait... Philip Mould: ... it's wonderful to see this in the flesh, isn't it? Fiona Bruce: How beautiful! LM: It is a lovely image, isn't it? PM: This is Lady Elizabeth Finch Hatton and her mixed race cousin Dido Belle. They are thought to have been painted in the late 1770s or early 1780s, a time when Britain was still heavily engaged in the transatlantic slave trade. So, the way it portrays the girls together is highly unusual... This is so important. This is so significant in the history of British portraiture--a black and a white subject shown as equals in a formal setting. FB: [i] ________, you wouldn't get an image of a black person and a white person together like this, in Britain at least, until, what, [ii] ________ the 1950s or something like that, so this was so ahead of its time. LM: It's incredibly unusual. Narration: Dido Belle was born into slavery... She was the illegitimate daughter of John Lindsay, an officer in the Royal Navy. Her mother was a slave in the West Indies... At the age of four, Dido Belle was brought to Britain by Lindsay and adopted by his uncle William Murray, the first Lord Mansfield. It was Mansfield himself who commissioned the painting of his two great nieces. For over a century, this picture has been credited to Johan Zoffany, a German-born painter who specialized in both society portraits and theatrical subjects, but today, the art world is convinced that this attribution is not correct. LM: If it is not Zoffany, but we actually confirm that it is not Zoffany, but we actually find a clue who the artist is, PM: Well, I mean, the problem is--[iii] ________, the excitement is--[iv] ________, the excitement is--that there's a huge pool of possibilities. This is a great flowering moment in British portrait painting. FB: And that's not the only thing because the inscription says "The Lady Elizabeth Finch Hatton." There is no mention of Dido Belle at all. LM: Absolutely. PM: [v] ________, wouldn't it be wonderful if we could not only add Sali's name but the name of an artist on that label as well? LM: That would be fantastic. This whodunit could help our understanding of the lives of Black Britons in a turbulent time in our history. Transcribed and adapted from: "Two Unknown Paintings Send Art Detectives on Fascinating Journey | Fake or Fortune?," YouTube, uploaded by Perspective, 25 Mar 2023. Based on the above data, answer the given subquestions.
Fill in the blank [i] with the most fitting discourse marker among the options given below.