Using a version range in a plugin dependency causes "failure to resolve artifact" error

If I declare a dependency in a plugin using an exact version, Maven correctly resolves the artifact. If, however, I change the dependency's version to a version range, Maven no longer resolves the artifact. I'm using the very same artifact and version range in my project's dependencies and everything works ok. See my attached pom.xml file for details, in particular, the comments "<Unable to render embedded object: File (-- Using version range here ok -->" and "<) not found.-- Can't use version range here! -->".

I am using the "major.minor.revision-buildNumber" version string syntax as described on the wiki.