An 80-year-old artist has painstakingly completed a handwritten and hand-illustrated Bible after a decade of devoting himself to the work.

A devout Catholic, Italian-born Dino Mazzoli began copying out the 1,473 page manuscript after becoming housebound due to illness. Using the Christian Community Bible, he wrote out the text using parker pens, and accompanied it with some 5,000 water colour and crayon illustrations.

He says drawing helped him to engage with the words, and his website describes the finished product as a "testament to...[his] spiritual devotion and determination."

Creating the Bible was a way of "bringing together his art and his faith" his daughter, Laura, told the Catholic Herald.

Once an art student in Rome, Mazzoli moved to the UK in 1961. His artwork has been exhibited all over Britain and further afield, but the Bible is his biggest undertaking to date. His son, Marco, helped him to digitalise the 23-volume endeavour, and it is now available to download from the App store.

"The strength of my faith definitely was the thing that allowed me to undertake, and finally complete, such a large project," he told Christian Today.

Mazzoli was influenced by his former mentor Renato Guttuso, in addition to Picasso, Oskar Kokoschka and German expressionism. He said he's "very, very happy" to have now completed the work, and hopes it will help people to read the Bible and experience God in a new way. "I feel that my Illustrated Bible, and the way I approached it, enlarging the pages, and making so many illustrations, makes it a truly unique way for anyone to experience it," he said.

"[I'm] happy to see the positive responses from the people that have seen it so far."