Master Craftsman Extraordinaire

"I take my time. I take a long time. There is no more room in my house [full of paintings on the walls]."
"My replica is exactly the same in every little tiny detail. At the end, I'm happy. I search always the ways to make it better."
"I take great joy in them [the art work he produces]."
"I'm trying to make an exact same copy in the condition it used to be when the artist just finished the painting. I'm not only replicating, I'm restoring too."
"I needed to express myself."
Cosimo Geracitano, Coquitlam, British Columbia

Cosimo Geracitano, 71, paints replicas of masterpiece art in his Coquitlam, B.C., home. (cosimogeracitano.com)

He is retired, now 71, once skilled at repairing electrical motors and generators which is what he did for a living. But when he was a young boy, living in the village of Bivongi in Reggio Calabria, Italy, a place where his father still lives, art fascinated him. His fascination with painting compelled him as a boy to paint. The first painting he completed was that of a ship. He had dreamed of such a ship which would take him far away from the village.

And eventually a ship did just that, bringing him far from Italy, and over the seas to begin the rest of his life in Canada. His was not a privileged background where he might envision attending a school of art. Which never stopped him from painting for pleasure until he reached 40 years of age. After which his life was consumed with work and family and the painting passion was laid away. But he returned to painting once he reached his 60s.

Cosimo Geracitano is surrounded by his replica paintings of masterpieces at his home in Coquitlam, B.C. Mark Yuen / Postmedia

He is now the proud possessor of some of the world's great paintings, the original work of the world's greatest baroque and renaissance artists. Paintings sublime and incandescent with the beauty of their conception and the perfection of their execution. Paintings by Leonardo da Vinci, Johannes Vermeer, Raphael, Vincent van Gogh, Sandro Botticelli, Canaletto, Michelangelo.  An incomparable selection and a wonderful collection, all in the possession of a modest, retired middle-class gentleman.

Geracitano's home is covered in his replicas. (cosimogeracitano.com)

And these paintings caress the walls of an ordinary house made extraordinary by their presence. There are, in this house 45 paintings, 18 of which are located in the living room, others dispersed throughout the house, but each of which is world-renowned and each encapsulating the most exalted of authors, subjects and visual splendours.

Mr. Geracitano has them in his private possession, representing his very own collection simply because of his own natural talent. His was not the original creative vision, the inspiration, the artistic voice and precise hand that created each of these treasures. But this self-taught craftsman acquired by his very own effort and affinity the technical ability to reproduce each of them, and in so doing lives surrounded by some of the most sublime artistic treasures the world has ever known.

Cosimo Geracitano admiring his replica painting of Primavera by Sandro Botticelli at his home in Coquitlam, B.C. Mark Yuen / Postmedia

From a scintillating reproduction of the Sistine Chapel ceiling of God creating Adam, courtesy of Michelangelo and replicated on the ceiling of his living room, to the Salvator Mundi painted by Leonardo, to a John Constable, spanning the years from the 14th century to the 19th, he has assembled them all. He has himself visited some of the museums where these masterpieces hang and where staff allowed him to sit in contemplation before them, even permitting him on occasion to take his own photographs of them.

He is constant to the mediums used in the execution of the originals, whether painted on canvas, wood or copper, mixing his own colours from the primaries of red, yellow, blue adding white. A grid assists him in laying out the image to be copied. For, he needs to express himself, and he is doing just that in his most current work, a Claude Monet and A Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, giving himself six months for the completion of each.

Cosimo Geracitano, a replica painter is working on recreating the Allegory of the Planets and Continents by Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, at his home in Coquitlam, B.C. Mark Yuen / Postmedia