I'm no art fiend, but I could swear the composition and styles of some of these paintings look exactly like, or very much similar to, western (old master) pieces
Yes, could be. These aren't ancient pieces or anything and don't usually accompany religious texts either, it would be interesting to see what pieces they may have been inspired from :)

I have little sympathy unfortunately, if I was stupid enough to wait around 6 hours just to exchange a few sentences with a TV person I don't know at all, I'd deserve to have pranks played on me too :/ I was unsurprised but still sad to see that they were all grown up too, not even excusable by young age factor.