Skin in the Frame: Educational Value of Historic Art in Dermatology

Historic artworks constitute a visual corpus for dermatology education; however, the literature has not been systematically evaluated against contemporary educational standards. This review characterizes published artworks depicting dermatologic disease and assesses their curriculum alignment, clinical accessibility, and skin tone diversity. This was conducted following PRISMA guidelines across 4 databases. Studies were included if they analyzed dermatologic conditions depicted in historic art and provided clinical diagnoses. Data were extracted on artwork characteristics, presence with the American Academy of Dermatology (AAD) Basic Dermatology Curriculum, availability in a clinical decision support system (VisualDx), and estimated skin tone using the Monk Skin Tone (MST) scale. 48 studies met the inclusion criteria, encompassing 77 unique artworks. Oil paintings comprised the dominant medium. A total of 34 distinct dermatologic diagnoses were identified, with alopecia-related conditions being the most depicted. Only 40.3% of the artworks depicted conditions represented in the American Academy of Dermatology Basic Dermatology Curriculum. In contrast, all artworks had their depicted conditions available in the clinical decision support system. Skin tone assessment revealed that 6 of 10 MST were represented; however, the distribution was heavily skewed towards lighter skin tones, with Monk 01-03 accounting for 81.2% of all ratings. The historic art literature in dermatology is diagnostically broad and accessible through contemporary clinical reference tools, yet, misaligned with the formal dermatology curriculum and underrepresention of darker skin tones. Intentional curation towards curriculum-prioritized topics and skin tone diversity would be needed for this work to serve as an educational and investigative resource across the full spectrum of dermatologic practice and research.