Curator:  The decision to restore the cloak of the central figure in Veronese's painting from its present red to the ...

shunhe January 8, 2020

Hi @kswope,

Thanks for the question! This is an important distinction to know for these kinds of questions. A premise is an unsupported, factual statement that we're just given. A subsidiary conclusion, on the other hand, is a premise that is supported by other premises, but itself is not the main conclusion. Here's a simple example:

Premise: It is raining.
Subsidiary conclusion: It is wet outside.
Main conclusion: I will not leave the house.

The main point I want to make is that I won't leave the house. Why? Well, we're told that it's raining. No other premise supports this, it's just a fact that it's raining outside. We then come to our second premise: it's wet outside. But we know this because of premise 1 - we know it's wet outside because of the rain. And the fact that it's wet outside is what gets us to our main conclusion. In this example, the set-up is similar:

Premise: Red paint was applied after painting was completed, and it wasn't mixed in Veronese's workshop
Subsidiary conclusion (supported by premise): Someone tampered with Veronese's painting
Main conclusion (supported by subsidiary conclusion): The decision to restore the cloak to green was justified

And here we can see that a subsidiary conclusion is both supported by premises and supports further conclusions, whereas a premise doesn't receive support from other premises. Hope this helps!