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In fact, this was not the original Salvator Mundi, just a nearly perfect replica, and the sender was the artist’s friend. But that revelation is not where the story ends. It is where it begins, because that replica is just one item in a private collection of paintings that must be one of the great artistic wonders of Canada — an entirely derivative collection of mostly life-sized masterworks from Italian Renaissance luminaries such as Leonardo and Michelangelo to Dutch Old Masters and English landscapes and French Impressionists, all painted by the precise hand of one retired electrical motor and generator repairman, Cosimo Geracitano, 71.

His house in Coquitlam, BC, is like the Louvre, the Uffizi, and the Rijksmuseum all in one, chock full of famous paintings, plus a few masterpieces whose originals are not in museums at all, such as his living room ceiling, which reproduces Michelangelo’s famed Sistine Chapel scene of God creating Adam.

There are 45 in total, including 18 in his living room alone. Salvator Mundi is his favourite because of the magic in the eyes.

“I take my time,” he said of his artistic copying. “I take a long time.”

But there is only so much time and so much space. Today, three and a half years after the death of his wife Caterina saw Geracitano’s artistic output spike dramatically to become a daily exercise, with more than 20 painted since her passing, he is running out of display space.

“There is no more room in my house,” he said in an interview, sounding at once sad and proud.