IELTS Real Reading Test 2025 - Q3 Test 3 with Practice Test, Answers And Explanation
Luyện tập đề IELTS Real Reading Test 2025 - Q3 Test 3 được lấy từ cuốn sách Real Test 2025 - Q3 với trải nghiệm thi IELTS trên máy và giải thích đáp án chi tiết bằng Linearthinking, kèm answer key và list từ vựng IELTS cần học trong bài đọc.
IELTS Real Reading Test 2025 - Q3 Test 3 with Practice Test, Answers And Explanation
Passage
❓ Câu hỏi passage 1
Question 1 - 7
Do the following statements agree with the information given in the Reading Passage?
TRUE if the statement agrees with the information
FALSE if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this
1
In Ancient China, writing was occasionally done on silk.
2
Coloured paper was invented during the Tang Dynasty.
3
Papermakers from Samarkand were captured by the Chinese.
4
Papermaking as a large-scale industry originated in Iran.
5
Papermaking skills were brought to Europe via North Africa.
6
When Gutenberg invented movable type, paper materials were very expensive.
7
The end of the trade in rags was brought about by the difficulty of transporting them.
Question 8 - 13
Complete the table below.
Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF PAPER
Place
Date of introduction
Materials used
Method of production
Egypt
about 2400 BC
a plant called papyrus
8
of the plant were softened in water, woven and pounded
Europe
unknown
parchment made from the skin of animals such as
9
skin was dried and
10
China
105 AD
11
of a mulberry tree and hemp rags
ingredients were mixed with water, pressed and put outside in the sun
12
751 AD
flax and hemp
mills made of
13
were used
Passage
❓ Câu hỏi passage 2
Question 14 - 18
Reading Passage has seven paragraphs A-G
Which paragraph contains the following information?
Write the correct letter, A-G
NB You may use any letter more than once
14
a weakness in some of Goya's paintings
15
a reason that might explain why some artists did not enjoy painting portraits
16
a genre Goya did not paint
17
description of a reaction to a promotion
18
a summary of the historical significance of Goya's works
Question 19 - 20
Choose TWO letters, A-E.
Which TWO statements are true about Goya's tapestry cartoons?
A
They featured lively civilians and labourers that he observed.
B
Individuals were portrayed without faces.
C
They were used to develop techniques for his future works.
D
People's social standings were a secondary focus.
E
He avoided painting political controversies.
Question 21 - 22
Choose TWO letters, A-E.
Which TWO statements are true about Goya's portraits?
A
His depiction of royalty was typical of the time.
B
He was meticulous about the details when painting clothes.
C
He generally avoided using the same pose.
D
He paid very close attention to the background in his paintings.
E
He did not believe in using the works of other artists as inspiration.
Question 23 - 26
Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.
Goya's Artistic Duality
Francisco Goya, in embracing the simplicity and truth in his art, masterfully navigated the delicate balance between idealism and reality. Among the many royal portraits of his career, his most significant was from Charles IV, in which he abandoned conventional majesty to faithfully reveal the monarch, whose depiction was later likened to a . His subsequent royal paintings, including the 1815 unflattering portrait of Ferdinand VII, show that he was able to depict truth without jeopardizing his position.
However, Goya's private portraiture revealed a different narrative, as exemplified by his 1820 double portrait with Dr. Arrieta, in which an ailing Goya is seen in the care of the good . It serves as a testament to Goya's pinnacle ability to portray humanity in both its finest and darkest moments, all while refraining from passing judgment; in the latter scenario, individuals may have to be dependent on the of their fellow men.
Passage
❓ Câu hỏi passage 3
Question 27 - 30
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage?
In following statements below, choose
YES if the statement agrees with the information
NO if the statement contradicts the information
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this
27
Childhood crazes can center on items of any value.
28
Children are more vulnerable to crazes now than they used to be.
29
Consumers make too many quick decisions in shops.
30
Crutchfield’s definition of conformity is the most reliable
Question 31 - 35
Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.
Studies on conformity
In the Jennes study, people had to guess how many were in a container. Jennes found that, in most cases, people opted for an estimate given by a . Asch asked his subjects to line lengths. To test the extent to which people would conform, he placed his subjects with colleagues who gave responses. He found that his subjects agreed with his colleagues 32% of the time, although they admitted to feeling about giving their answer.
Question 36 - 40
Complete the notes below.
Write ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.
Kelman’s processes of social conformity
Compliance
- people support the majority view despite their own ideas
- social harmony is maintained
- illustrated by the results of the research conducted by
36
37
- majority view is considered most
38
view
- people persuade themselves despite their own ideas
39
- people change their ideas to those of the majority
- typical of
40
DOL IELTS Đình Lực
05/05/2026
📖 Bài đọc passage 1
The origin of paper
The word paper derives from the Greek term for the ancient Egyptian writing material called papyrus. In about 2400 BC, the Egyptians discovered how to make a writing surface out of papyrus, a type of reed that grows along waterways in southern Europe and North Africa. The Egyptians cut the plant into strips which they softened in water. Papyrus was cross-woven into a mat and then pounded into a hard thin sheet.
As the papyrus plant requires subtropical conditions to grow, papyrus was not much used in Europe at that time; instead, the main material used for writing was parchment. This was made from animal skin and was extremely expensive. In fact, it has been estimated that a single book written on parchment required the skins of 300 sheep. The skins had to be specifically prepared by drying them and they were then stretched on a special frame. It is not known when parchment was first introduced, but it was the main writing material in Europe for hundreds of years.
Paper, which is made from pulp, rags, and fibers of plants, seems to have been invented in China and is considered to be one of the Four Great Inventions of Ancient China. In 105 AD, under the Han Dynasty emperor Ho-Ti, a government official in China named Ts’ai Lun was the first to start a papermaking industry. Ts’ai Lun seems to have made his paper by mixing finely chopped mulberry bark and hemp rags with water, mashing the mixture flat with a stone mortar, and then pressing out the water and letting it dry in the sun. He may have based his idea on bark cloth, which was very common in China and also made from mulberry.
Previously, during the Shang (1600-1050 BC) and Zhou (1050-256 BC dynasties of Ancient China, documents were ordinarily written on bone or bamboo (on tablets or on bamboo strips sewn and rolled together into scrolls), making them very heavy and awkward to transport. The light material of silk was sometimes used, but was normally too expensive to consider. When it was first invented, paper was used for purposes of wrapping or padding protection for delicate bronze mirrors. Although paper used for writing became popular by the 3rd century AD, it continued to be used for wrapping and other purposes.
During the Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD) paper was folded and sewn into square bags to preserve the flavor of tea. During the same period, according to a written account, tea was served from baskets with multi-colored paper cups and paper napkins of different sizes and shapes. During the Chinese Song Dynasty (960-1279 AD) not only did the government produce the world's first known printed paper money, or banknote, but paper money bestowed as gifts was wrapped in special paper envelopes.
Paper spread slowly outside of China; other Asian cultures, even after seeing paper, could not make it themselves. Instruction in the manufacturing process was required, and the Chinese were reluctant to share their secrets. It made its true push westward in 751 AD when the Tang Dynasty was at war with the Islamic world. During a battle on the banks of the Tarus river, a Chinese caravan was captured which happened to include several papermakers. They were taken away to Samarkand, which was a good place to make paper because it had an abundant supply of hemp and flax. Samarkanders changed the technology of manufacturing paper. They began to prepare it in stone mills and Samarkand became an important papermaking center.
The rudimentary and laborious process of papermaking was refined and bulk manufacturing of paper began in Iran, where they invented a method to make a thicker sheet of paper, which helped transform papermaking from an art into an important business. Gradually papermakers made their way further west through the Arab world - to Baghdad, Damascus and Cairo. Finally, when the Moors from North Africa invaded Spain and Portugal, they brought the technology with them and so it was that papermaking entered Europe in the 12th century.
In Europe, the preferred medium for the artists and literati of the time was still the smooth and lustrous parchment. The notion of paper being used as a practical everyday item did not occur until the 15th century when Johannes Gutenberg perfected movable type printing, which included the use of metal molds and alloys, a special press, and oil-based inks, allowing the mass production of printed books. The birth of the modern paper and printing industry is commonly marked from this date.
Printing technology rapidly developed and created an ever-increasing demand for paper. The early European papers were made from recycled cotton and linen - and a huge trade quickly developed around the trading of old rags. It is said that the disease known as ‘the Black Death’ entered England from Europe on these old rags. Yet soon this source became insufficient and some curious attempts were made to find new materials. Experiments with fibers such as straw, cabbage, wasp nests and finally wood, resulted in inexpensive - and replaceable - materials for papermaking. Today, the long soft fibers of softwoods such as spruce have become the most suitable source of pulp for the mass production of paper.
🔥 Đáp án & giải thích 1
1
True
Giải thích chi tiết
☺️ Ứng dụng Linearthinking để giải quyết dạng bài True / False / Not Given
Step 01: Read the question to understand (main idea + detail)
Simplified: in Ancient China writing was done occasionally on silk
-------
Step 02: Locate relevant information
🔍 Từ khoá: “Ancient China”, “silk”, “written”, “occasionally/sometimes”.
=> Dựa vào các từ khoá trên -> Tìm được trích dẫn ở đoạn 4.
-------
Step 03: Read relevant information to understand (main + detail)
📌 Trích dẫn: “Previously, during the Shang (1600-1050 BC) and Zhou (1050-256 BC dynasties of Ancient China, documents were ordinarily written on bone or bamboo (on tablets or on bamboo strips sewn and rolled together into scrolls), making them very heavy and awkward to transport. The light material of silk was sometimes used, but was normally too expensive to consider.”
Simplified: In Ancient China , documents were ordinarily written on bone or bamboo ;
silk was sometimes used but too expensive
Main idea: Lụa đôi khi được dùng làm vật liệu viết, dù thường quá đắt.
-------
Step 04: Compare meaning with meaning
Trong bài đọc: Lụa đôi khi được sử dụng để viết (“was sometimes used”).
Trong câu hỏi: Việc viết chữ thỉnh thoảng được thực hiện trên lụa.
⇒ Hai ý tương đương hoàn toàn (“sometimes” ≈ “occasionally”).
✅ Chọn: TRUE
-------
Giải thích vì sao không phải FALSE / NOT GIVEN?
FALSE: nếu bài nói lụa không bao giờ được dùng → bài nói ngược lại (“sometimes used”).
NOT GIVEN: nếu bài không đề cập đến lụa → nhưng bài nói rất rõ về việc dùng lụa.
From princes to paupers: how Goya's portraits tell the story of Spain
A
A. There are, according to current scholarship, 160 existing portraits by Francisco de Goya - about a third of his painted output. The real number, though, is much greater since there are no pure landscapes in Goya's work, in that everything he ever painted deals with people. In the work of no other great portraitist are a nation's people, history, traumas, folk traditions, and superstitions so comprehensively and relentlessly captured. His subject was a good one since Goya lived in interesting times: his lifetime was a period that saw Spain pass through the effects of the French Revolution, the Napoleonic wars, and the restoration of the monarchy; it was ruled by a succession of authoritarian and liberal governments; and was simultaneously marked by the Enlightenment. Put his work together – the public and private paintings, the personal drawings and sketches, and the unsettling and sinister etching series – and what you have is a portrait in the round of Spain itself.
B
His work as a portraitist has its origins in the 45 tapestry cartoons he painted after he moved to Madrid in 1775. Although his designs don't show portraits, they do show types – the majos and majas who gave Madrid its street swagger, peasants and rich men, courting couples, singers, hunters, children, and young men and women playing blind man's buff or tossing a mannequin into the air. The pictures have a light, rococo palette and the faces are individualised without being those of individuals. But in them, Goya practised poses and groupings and a way of handling light on and around figures that was to be invaluable.
C
The tapestry designs also show social roles rather than the people inhabiting them, but when it came to painting portraits proper, Goya would turn this on its head. His greatest strength as a portraitist is that regardless of the status of the sitter, be they a king and queen, the Duke of Wellington, or a doctor or writer, it was the person he showed first and their position second. It was this trait, most apparent in his royal portraiture, that has led him to be seen as satirising the Bourbon monarchy rather than as a painter who depicted what he saw without showing obeisance to the usual flattering conventions. In Robert Hughes's phrase, he did not 'pay reflexive homage to authority' but instead walked a fine line between respect and truth.
D
Goya's success was rapid; in 1785 he was made deputy director of painting at the Royal Academy (his main message to his students was subversive – 'there are no rules in painting') and in 1786 became pintor de cámara, required to paint 'works required for royal service'. Не immediately spent some of his 15,000-reales salary on a two-wheeled gig (one of only three in Madrid) which he promptly crashed on his first outing. His amour propre untouched, he wrote to his childhood friend Martín Zapater: 'I have now established an enviable way of living: I do not wait on anyone in antechambers, and if anyone wants anything from me they must come to me; I have made myself more in demand and unless it is a person of rank or at the request of a friend I would do nothing for anyone...'
E
Part of the reason for his success was that, unlike Gainsborough, for example, he did not resent portraiture as an economically necessary chore that ate away at the time he could devote to higher art. Portraiture fascinated him; it was, after all, part of that 'sacred science which requires so much study' and his portraits reveal a fully engaged artist. There is hardly any repetition in his poses (to help, he drew on prints of English portraits as well as classical statuary), he worked hard to give his sitters in repose a sense of latent movement, and he defined them by the careful depiction of the space around them. When it came to clothing he allowed himself extraordinary freedom, the frogging on uniforms or lace on a dress sketched in thick impasto rather than being laboriously defined. From close up such three-dimensional scumblings look out of focus but from a distance, they coalesce into silks, braiding, and gauze. Such varieties of technique within a painting keep the eye entertained and moving.
F
'My work is very simple. My art reveals idealism and truth,' Goya claimed. The truth though is always more apparent than the idealism. In the most important commission of his career, for example, the portrait of Charles IV and the royal family of 1800, he eschewed entirely the grandeur of majesty to portray the assembled Bourbons as they appeared - a motley grouping (a French visitor had likened Charles and his queen Maria Luisa to a butcher and his wife) in fancy clothes. Goya may have been a political liberal but he wouldn't have jeopardised his hard-won new position as first court painter – the first Spaniard since Velázquez to hold the role - in order to score political points at the expense of his patrons. That his sitters didn't regard the portrait as unflattering was evidenced by succeeding royal commissions, not least his 1815 portrait of Ferdinand VII. Ferdinand himself was physically unprepossessing, tyrannical, vicious, and small-minded and that is exactly how Goya shows him. The king, however, looking in Goya's particular mirror, saw no such characteristics staring back at him.
G
The private side of Goya's portraiture was a world away from the public. The contrast between the Ferdinand portrait and the remarkable 1820 double portrait, showing Goya with Dr Arrieta, represents a moral version of the three ages of man – the 73-year-old painter in the throes of a debilitating illness being tended by his doctor. If Ferdinand represents human malignity and Goya its frailty, then Arrieta stands for man's innate kindness. While not all his portraits are successful (some have a doll-like stiffness), this is what Goya at his best could do: in the guise of representing individuals he showed, without judging, man as a universal being.
🔥 Đáp án & giải thích 2
14
G
Giải thích chi tiết
☺️ Ứng dụng Linearthinking để giải quyết dạng bài Matching Information
📌 Dạng Matching Information chúng ta nên làm cuối cùng, sau khi đã làm các dạng câu hỏi khác nhé DOLBIES, bởi vì lúc này mình đã đọc và hiểu nội dung của bài rồi, cộng thêm nghệ thuật Specify của Linearthinking → sẽ nhanh chóng tìm được vị trí đáp án hơn!!
-------
Step 01: Read the question to predict
Hiểu câu hỏi: a weakness in some of Goya's paintings
Specify & Predict: Câu hỏi yêu cầu tìm một hạn chế / điểm chưa thành công trong tranh của Goya,
ví dụ: tranh thiếu tự nhiên, chưa đạt hiệu quả như mong đợi.
-------
Step 02: Khoanh vùng đoạn văn
🔍 Từ khóa: “weakness”, “some/not all”, “paintings/portraits”
→ Dựa vào các từ khoá trên, có thể khoanh vùng được đoạn G vì có xuất hiện cụm: “not all his portraits are successful” (không phải tất cả tranh chân dung đều thành công) và “doll-like stiffness”(sự cứng đơ như búp bê) → một điểm yếu cụ thể trong tranh.
A review of conformity and some of the studies that have been done on it
During your childhood, there will have been some kind of craze which affected all the people in your school. It may have been to do with a particular toy or possibly a must-have item of clothing. It may have been something as simple as a type of pen or as expensive as an electronic games console. Fashion designers, toy manufacturers and anyone else involved in the retail trade love conformity. Set up a craze, especially in the young and everyone will go for it. In fact, it's an ideal way to sell huge quantities of merchandise. The levels of conformity in consumerism are phenomenal. When you actually stand back and consider how easily we are persuaded that having certain items is the only way we can ensure peace of mind, you see what an important concept conformity is.
Conformity has been described as ‘yielding to group pressure’ (Crutchfield 1962). However, this implies that other people put pressure on us to make us conform and this is not always the case. A better definition is given by Aronson (1976) who said it was ‘a change in a person’s behaviour or opinions as a result of real or imagined pressure from a person or group of people.’ This would make more sense, as often the pressure we feel is imagined. The person or group he refers to would have to be important to us at the time, regardless of their status.
There has been considerable research on conformity. One of the first studies looked at the answers people gave when asked to estimate the number of beans in a bottle (Jennes, 1932). If you have ever entered a 'guess the number' competition, you probably looked at the previous estimates made and based your judgment on what other people had guessed. This is more or less what happened in the Jennes study. First of all, he asked the respondents to give their own estimates, and then he asked them to decide a group estimate. Finally, he asked them alone again and discovered that they had stayed with the group.
Probably the most famous study on conformity was undertaken by Asch (1951) when he created a situation where many of his subjects gave answers which were blatantly untrue, rather than contradict the people they were with. He did this by getting his subject to sit round a table with six stooges (colleagues of the experimenter) so that the subject was second to last. He showed them all a large card which had three lines of different lengths drawn on it, labelled A, В and C. He then gave them a card with a single line and asked them to match this in terms of length to one of the lines A, В or C.
The stooges gave untrue responses in a number of the trials and the subjects were left in the situation where they either reported what they saw with their own eyes or conformed to the norm of the group. When the results were assessed, Asch found that in one out of every three trials where the wrong answer was given, the subject gave the same wrong answer as the stooges. This led to an average level of conformity of 32 per cent. Asch interviewed his subjects after the trials to try to find out why they conformed to an answer which was so obviously wrong. Most of them said that they did not want to cause problems within the group, although they falsehearted that when they did give wrong answers it made them anxious. (Asch found that when there was just one other person present who did not go along with the majority, no matter how many others there were, it was sufficient to make the subject give the right answer).
Kelman (1953) outlined three processes which can explain social conformity The first is compliance where subjects go along with the crowd to prevent any in-group hostility or bad feeling and to maintain group harmony. However, they do not change their own private belief. If we look back to the Asch study, we can see that the subjects were simply complying with the demands of the experimental situation but hadn’t actually internalized the group’s norms. They agreed in public, but dissented in private. In a process known as internalization, however, subjects do actually see the view of the group as the more valid one. They may be able to do this, for example, by convincing themselves that their eyesight is poor. Sometimes, however, subjects actually seem to change their beliefs because they want to become more like their heroes. If they really want to become part of an in-group, they will start to identify with that group and take on the group’s values and beliefs, even if they are different to their own. Kelman calls this identification. It frequently happens with teenagers who want to become more like a peer group in order to be accepted, and suddenly seem to go against all the values and beliefs of their parents.
So why is it that we have to conform? Some people feel confident most of the time, have high self-esteem and do not have to go along with the majority. For most of us, though, how confident we feel varies from day to day, depending on the situation we are in and this can influence behaviour.
🔥 Đáp án & giải thích 3
27
Yes
Giải thích chi tiết
☺️ Ứng dụng Linearthinking để giải quyết dạng bài Yes/ No / Not Given
Step 01: Read the question to understand (main idea + detail)
Simplified: Childhood crazes can center on items of any value
-------
Step 02: Locate relevant information
🔍 Từ khoá: "craze", "childhood", "center on", "items of any value"
→ Dựa vào các từ khoá trên --> Ta tìm được trích dẫn ở đoạn 1
-------
Step 03: Read relevant information to understand (main + detail)
📌 Trích dẫn: "It may have been to do with a particular toy or possibly a must-have item of clothing. It may have been something as simple as a type of pen or as expensive as an electronic games console." (Đoạn 1)
Simplified: It (craze) may have been something as simple as a type of pen or as expensive as an electronic games console
-------
Step 04: Compare meaning with meaning
Trong bài đọc: Trào lưu thời thơ ấu có thể xoay quanh những vật phẩm đơn giản như loại bút hoặc đắt tiền như máy chơi game điện tử.
Trong câu hỏi: Trào lưu tuổi thơ có thể tập trung vào những vật phẩm có giá trị bất kỳ.
⇒ ✅ Chọn: YES
-------
Lưu ý chung:
NO sẽ đúng nếu bài đọc nói trào lưu không thể xoay quanh đồ ở mọi mức giá, ví dụ câu trong bài phải mang ý: “Childhood crazes only involved expensive items / only involved cheap items.”
NOT GIVEN sẽ đúng nếu bài đọc chỉ nói có “craze” và nêu ví dụ toy/clothing, nhưng không hề đề cập phạm vi giá trị (rẻ/đắt), tức không có thông tin so sánh kiểu “as simple as … or as expensive as …”.
The word paper derives from the Greek term for the ancient Egyptian writing material called papyrus. In about 2400 BC, the Egyptians discovered how to make a writing surface out of papyrus, a type of reed that grows along waterways in southern Europe and North Africa. The Egyptians cut the plant into strips which they softened in water. Papyrus was cross-woven into a mat and then pounded into a hard thin sheet.
As the papyrus plant requires subtropical conditions to grow, papyrus was not much used in Europe at that time; instead, the main material used for writing was parchment. This was made from animal skin and was extremely expensive. In fact, it has been estimated that a single book written on parchment required the skins of 300 sheep. The skins had to be specifically prepared by drying them and they were then stretched on a special frame. It is not known when parchment was first introduced, but it was the main writing material in Europe for hundreds of years.
Paper, which is made from pulp, rags, and fibers of plants, seems to have been invented in China and is considered to be one of the Four Great Inventions of Ancient China. In 105 AD, under the Han Dynasty emperor Ho-Ti, a government official in China named Ts’ai Lun was the first to start a papermaking industry. Ts’ai Lun seems to have made his paper by mixing finely chopped mulberry bark and hemp rags with water, mashing the mixture flat with a stone mortar, and then pressing out the water and letting it dry in the sun. He may have based his idea on bark cloth, which was very common in China and also made from mulberry.
Previously, during the Shang (1600-1050 BC) and Zhou (1050-256 BC dynasties of Ancient China, documents were ordinarily written on bone or bamboo (on tablets or on bamboo strips sewn and rolled together into scrolls), making them very heavy and awkward to transport. The light material of silk was sometimes used, but was normally too expensive to consider. When it was first invented, paper was used for purposes of wrapping or padding protection for delicate bronze mirrors. Although paper used for writing became popular by the 3rd century AD, it continued to be used for wrapping and other purposes.
During the Tang Dynasty (618-907 AD) paper was folded and sewn into square bags to preserve the flavor of tea. During the same period, according to a written account, tea was served from baskets with multi-colored paper cups and paper napkins of different sizes and shapes. During the Chinese Song Dynasty (960-1279 AD) not only did the government produce the world's first known printed paper money, or banknote, but paper money bestowed as gifts was wrapped in special paper envelopes.
Paper spread slowly outside of China; other Asian cultures, even after seeing paper, could not make it themselves. Instruction in the manufacturing process was required, and the Chinese were reluctant to share their secrets. It made its true push westward in 751 AD when the Tang Dynasty was at war with the Islamic world. During a battle on the banks of the Tarus river, a Chinese caravan was captured which happened to include several papermakers. They were taken away to Samarkand, which was a good place to make paper because it had an abundant supply of hemp and flax. Samarkanders changed the technology of manufacturing paper. They began to prepare it in stone mills and Samarkand became an important papermaking center.
The rudimentary and laborious process of papermaking was refined and bulk manufacturing of paper began in Iran, where they invented a method to make a thicker sheet of paper, which helped transform papermaking from an art into an important business. Gradually papermakers made their way further west through the Arab world - to Baghdad, Damascus and Cairo. Finally, when the Moors from North Africa invaded Spain and Portugal, they brought the technology with them and so it was that papermaking entered Europe in the 12th century.
In Europe, the preferred medium for the artists and literati of the time was still the smooth and lustrous parchment. The notion of paper being used as a practical everyday item did not occur until the 15th century when Johannes Gutenberg perfected movable type printing, which included the use of metal molds and alloys, a special press, and oil-based inks, allowing the mass production of printed books. The birth of the modern paper and printing industry is commonly marked from this date.
Printing technology rapidly developed and created an ever-increasing demand for paper. The early European papers were made from recycled cotton and linen - and a huge trade quickly developed around the trading of old rags. It is said that the disease known as ‘the Black Death’ entered England from Europe on these old rags. Yet soon this source became insufficient and some curious attempts were made to find new materials. Experiments with fibers such as straw, cabbage, wasp nests and finally wood, resulted in inexpensive - and replaceable - materials for papermaking. Today, the long soft fibers of softwoods such as spruce have become the most suitable source of pulp for the mass production of paper.
were ordinarily written on bone or bamboo
silk
was sometimes used
but too expensive
B. His work as a portraitist has its origins in the 45 tapestry cartoons he painted after he moved to Madrid in 1775. Although his designs don't show portraits, they do show types – the majos and majas who gave Madrid its street swagger, peasants and rich men, courting couples, singers, hunters, children, and young men and women playing blind man's buff or tossing a mannequin into the air. The pictures have a light, rococo palette and the faces are individualised without being those of individuals. But in them, Goya practised poses and groupings and a way of handling light on and around figures that was to be invaluable.
C. The tapestry designs also show social roles rather than the people inhabiting them, but when it came to painting portraits proper, Goya would turn this on its head. His greatest strength as a portraitist is that regardless of the status of the sitter, be they a king and queen, the Duke of Wellington, or a doctor or writer, it was the person he showed first and their position second. It was this trait, most apparent in his royal portraiture, that has led him to be seen as satirising the Bourbon monarchy rather than as a painter who depicted what he saw without showing obeisance to the usual flattering conventions. In Robert Hughes's phrase, he did not 'pay reflexive homage to authority' but instead walked a fine line between respect and truth.
D. Goya's success was rapid; in 1785 he was made deputy director of painting at the Royal Academy (his main message to his students was subversive – 'there are no rules in painting') and in 1786 became pintor de cámara, required to paint 'works required for royal service'. Не immediately spent some of his 15,000-reales salary on a two-wheeled gig (one of only three in Madrid) which he promptly crashed on his first outing. His amour propre untouched, he wrote to his childhood friend Martín Zapater: 'I have now established an enviable way of living: I do not wait on anyone in antechambers, and if anyone wants anything from me they must come to me; I have made myself more in demand and unless it is a person of rank or at the request of a friend I would do nothing for anyone...'
E. Part of the reason for his success was that, unlike Gainsborough, for example, he did not resent portraiture as an economically necessary chore that ate away at the time he could devote to higher art. Portraiture fascinated him; it was, after all, part of that 'sacred science which requires so much study' and his portraits reveal a fully engaged artist. There is hardly any repetition in his poses (to help, he drew on prints of English portraits as well as classical statuary), he worked hard to give his sitters in repose a sense of latent movement, and he defined them by the careful depiction of the space around them. When it came to clothing he allowed himself extraordinary freedom, the frogging on uniforms or lace on a dress sketched in thick impasto rather than being laboriously defined. From close up such three-dimensional scumblings look out of focus but from a distance, they coalesce into silks, braiding, and gauze. Such varieties of technique within a painting keep the eye entertained and moving.
F. 'My work is very simple. My art reveals idealism and truth,' Goya claimed. The truth though is always more apparent than the idealism. In the most important commission of his career, for example, the portrait of Charles IV and the royal family of 1800, he eschewed entirely the grandeur of majesty to portray the assembled Bourbons as they appeared - a motley grouping (a French visitor had likened Charles and his queen Maria Luisa to a butcher and his wife) in fancy clothes. Goya may have been a political liberal but he wouldn't have jeopardised his hard-won new position as first court painter – the first Spaniard since Velázquez to hold the role - in order to score political points at the expense of his patrons. That his sitters didn't regard the portrait as unflattering was evidenced by succeeding royal commissions, not least his 1815 portrait of Ferdinand VII. Ferdinand himself was physically unprepossessing, tyrannical, vicious, and small-minded and that is exactly how Goya shows him. The king, however, looking in Goya's particular mirror, saw no such characteristics staring back at him.
G. The private side of Goya's portraiture was a world away from the public. The contrast between the Ferdinand portrait and the remarkable 1820 double portrait, showing Goya with Dr Arrieta, represents a moral version of the three ages of man – the 73-year-old painter in the throes of a debilitating illness being tended by his doctor. If Ferdinand represents human malignity and Goya its frailty, then Arrieta stands for man's innate kindness. While not all his portraits are successful (some have a doll-like stiffness), this is what Goya at his best could do: in the guise of representing individuals he showed, without judging, man as a universal being.
During your childhood, there will have been some kind of craze which affected all the people in your school. It may have been to do with a particular toy or possibly a must-have item of clothing. It may have been something as simple as a type of pen or as expensive as an electronic games console. Fashion designers, toy manufacturers and anyone else involved in the retail trade love conformity. Set up a craze, especially in the young and everyone will go for it. In fact, it's an ideal way to sell huge quantities of merchandise. The levels of conformity in consumerism are phenomenal. When you actually stand back and consider how easily we are persuaded that having certain items is the only way we can ensure peace of mind, you see what an important concept conformity is.
Conformity has been described as ‘yielding to group pressure’ (Crutchfield 1962). However, this implies that other people put pressure on us to make us conform and this is not always the case. A better definition is given by Aronson (1976) who said it was ‘a change in a person’s behaviour or opinions as a result of real or imagined pressure from a person or group of people.’ This would make more sense, as often the pressure we feel is imagined. The person or group he refers to would have to be important to us at the time, regardless of their status.
There has been considerable research on conformity. One of the first studies looked at the answers people gave when asked to estimate the number of beans in a bottle (Jennes, 1932). If you have ever entered a 'guess the number' competition, you probably looked at the previous estimates made and based your judgment on what other people had guessed. This is more or less what happened in the Jennes study. First of all, he asked the respondents to give their own estimates, and then he asked them to decide a group estimate. Finally, he asked them alone again and discovered that they had stayed with the group.
Probably the most famous study on conformity was undertaken by Asch (1951) when he created a situation where many of his subjects gave answers which were blatantly untrue, rather than contradict the people they were with. He did this by getting his subject to sit round a table with six stooges (colleagues of the experimenter) so that the subject was second to last. He showed them all a large card which had three lines of different lengths drawn on it, labelled A, В and C. He then gave them a card with a single line and asked them to match this in terms of length to one of the lines A, В or C.
The stooges gave untrue responses in a number of the trials and the subjects were left in the situation where they either reported what they saw with their own eyes or conformed to the norm of the group. When the results were assessed, Asch found that in one out of every three trials where the wrong answer was given, the subject gave the same wrong answer as the stooges. This led to an average level of conformity of 32 per cent. Asch interviewed his subjects after the trials to try to find out why they conformed to an answer which was so obviously wrong. Most of them said that they did not want to cause problems within the group, although they falsehearted that when they did give wrong answers it made them anxious. (Asch found that when there was just one other person present who did not go along with the majority, no matter how many others there were, it was sufficient to make the subject give the right answer).
Kelman (1953) outlined three processes which can explain social conformity The first is compliance where subjects go along with the crowd to prevent any in-group hostility or bad feeling and to maintain group harmony. However, they do not change their own private belief. If we look back to the Asch study, we can see that the subjects were simply complying with the demands of the experimental situation but hadn’t actually internalized the group’s norms. They agreed in public, but dissented in private. In a process known as internalization, however, subjects do actually see the view of the group as the more valid one. They may be able to do this, for example, by convincing themselves that their eyesight is poor. Sometimes, however, subjects actually seem to change their beliefs because they want to become more like their heroes. If they really want to become part of an in-group, they will start to identify with that group and take on the group’s values and beliefs, even if they are different to their own. Kelman calls this identification. It frequently happens with teenagers who want to become more like a peer group in order to be accepted, and suddenly seem to go against all the values and beliefs of their parents.
So why is it that we have to conform? Some people feel confident most of the time, have high self-esteem and do not have to go along with the majority. For most of us, though, how confident we feel varies from day to day, depending on the situation we are in and this can influence behaviour.
