Wish you had the sculpted beauty of Michelangelo’s David, or perhaps to look like you stepped out of a Raphael portrait? You could be in luck—if you live in Russia. In what has been hailed as a world first, Moscow’s State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts has launched an art appreciation course for budding plastic surgeons from the Pirogov Russian National Research Medical University. Natalya Manturova, who heads the university’s department of plastic and reconstructive surgery, proposed the course, saying that plastic surgeons must know about art and sculpture and how to preserve their patients’ individuality. “Otherwise we get a negative flow of public opinion about how, as a result of plastic surgery, everyone now looks the same,” Manturova says. “Before cutting, one must know how to draw.” The museum’s director, Marina Loshak, said: “Our task is for them to be inspired on the inside, for their eyes to glow and for them to wake up happy”. So far, students have been subjected to a lecture by the contemporary artist Dmitry Gutov, and a tour of the Raphael exhibition currently on show at the Pushkin.
