In consultation with the graduate students and faculty, Timothy Riggs, curator of collections at the Ackland Art Museum, explored certain specific aspects of each painting. The results of this research are presented in a different way for each painting:
- for Venus and Cupid, the script for a dramatic monologue (performed at the Museum December 2 and 3, 2006) offering a fictional but plausible answer to the question: what did this painting mean to its first owner, the castrato Farinelli?
- for Lord Holland, a short examination of the artistic taste of Lord Holland and his uncle and mentor Charles James Fox, suggesting why Holland would have selected the neoclassical painter Fabre for his portrait.
- for Satan Leaving the Court of Chaos, an analysis of the figures depicted in the painting, presenting a reasoned identification of the eight subsidiary figures and showing how they relate to the text of Paradise Lost.