After ten years of painstakingly illustrating the Bible and copying the text by hand, Italian retiree Dino Mazzoli has completed his labour of love and is ready to sell his work for charity.

According to the 78 year old Mazzoli, the idea for his work came to him when he was forced to give up his work at a book shop in 2001 because of mobility issues, Visual News reported.

Being a devout Christian, he said he wanted to do something unique to express his faith.

"I know it is perhaps considered old-fashioned but I am a Christian and this was something I wanted to do. It is unique - people have told me that they have not seen anything like it before," he said in an interview with The Daily Mail.

His work was so unique that he even received a letter from the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury, praising him for his efforts.

"My son sent it to Rome and I got a letter back thanking me for taking the time to do it. I also got a letter from and Archbishop and the Jerusalem Bible makers," he said.

For 10 years, he worked from 8am to 10 or 11am, and continued working through the afternoon and in the evening to draw scenes from the Bible using parker pens, watercolours and collages. He proceeded to copy out the words of the Old Testament and a British book of the new testament on A4 paper.

As a result, the completed 1,500 page Christian community version of the Bible comes with 5,000 illustrations of scenes from the Bible, often inspired by famous people like Anne Frank and William Blake.

The artistic style, Mazzoli said was heavily influenced by Matisse, Picasso and Cezanne.

The book is now available on iTunes after the Mazzoli family received final copyright permission for using text from an American-based translation.

As for the proceeds of the sale of his book, Mazzoli said that he is not expecting to profit from his work as he wants all of the sales to go to charities like Save the Children.

Mazzoli assured that he will continue to paint for his friends and for his family and is looking forward to this as his next project.

"I will keep painting. I do pictures for friends and love painting my family. I can't go out any more because of my health, but I still have my painting and I am thankful for that," he said.