Cosimo Geracitano of Coquitlam, B.C., displays his replica of Michelangelo’s "Creation of Adam" on his ceiling.
This 71-year-old artist’s walls in his Canadian home are filled with paintings by the greats, including Johannes Vermeer’s "The Girl With the Pearl Earring," Sandro Botticelli’s "Primavera" and even Michelangelo’s "Creation of Adam" on painted on one ceiling.
Even though none of them are real, it is perhaps more impressive that Cosimo Geracitano of Coquitlam, British Columbia, painted them all himself.
“I love art and art history,” Geracitano told InsideEdition.com. “I’m fascinated by all these wonderful paintings and I knew I could never buy those paintings – they are hundreds of millions of dollars. I decided to paint it myself, replicate, and now my house is like a little museum.”
In addition to being the father of three and grandfather of five, he said that over the last 10 years, he has painted 45 replica paintings from ranging from the Renaissance to Impressionism.
Geracitano’s even has a miniature replica of the Sistine Chapel featuring just the "Creation of Adam," which he painted on panels then installed on his ceiling afterward.
“Looking at books of the Sistine Chapel, I said, 'This will be perfect there,'” he said. “In fact, it is.”
He explained he started painting as a boy growing up in Bivongi, Italy.
“I stared at the sea, I was hoping I was leaving my town where the conditions were not very good, we were very poor,” Geracitano explained. “So I painted a ship and thought, 'Maybe one day I’ll board one of these vessels and leave this town.' I did.”
Geracitano settled in Canada in 1967 and got married shortly after.
“'The Sunflowers' by Van Gogh, that was [my wife's] favorite,” Geracitano said. “One day, she say, ‘Why don’t you paint 'The Sunflowers,’ and around 2010 I did an exact copy. I got a poster from the National Gallery, London, I zoomed in on their website on every little detail and replicated it, and she was happy with that. She loved it, and then we went to see the original and it’s about the same.”
When his wife died of a heart attack three-and-a-half years ago, he passed his business onto his son and used his newfound spare time to focus on his paintings.
Geracitano said he now paints almost every day, and can spend weeks to months on a single piece.
He is now working on a recreation of the "Allegory of the Planets and Continents" by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo – a work in progress he started nearly three months ago.
“All the paintings I’ve chosen so far, I’ve seen the originals and they’re so wonderful, so inspiring,” Geracitano said.
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