Paraphrasing Practice to Improve Writing
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Paraphrasing Exercise 2Read the following passage and paraphrase it by putting it into your own words.
"Michelangelo was a man of tenacious and profound memory,” Vasari says, “so that, on seeing the works of others only once, he remembered them perfectly and could avail himself of them in such a manner that scarcely anyone has ever noticed it."
That “scarcely anyone has ever noticed it,” is easy to understand. For, Michelangelo, when exploiting the “works of others,” classical or modern, subjected them to a transformation so radical, that the results appear no less “Michelangelesque” than his independent creations. From Erwin Panofsky, Studies in Iconography. New York: Harper and Row, 1971.
There is not a single correct answer, but you could paraphrase the above passage by writing something like this:
Michelangelo had a tremendous memory. He could remember the details of works of art after having seen them just once. He copied these works, but changed them dramatically--he created copies in his own, unique style. As a result, few people ever realized some of his works were actually copies.
