ROME (Reuters) - Calendars in Italy use bare breasts to sell everything from cars to coffins.

Now, a different calendar uses photos of nude women who have had breast reconstruction to sell a very simple but vital message -- that there is life for women after breast cancer.

"Calendars in Italy are usually associated with female beauty and we wanted to send a message that courage is beautiful too," Dr Simonetta Franchelli told Reuters Monday.

Franchelli and her colleague Marisa Muggiano, both of whom work at the Genoa Tumor Institute, came up with the idea to encourage women who have undergone radical mastectomy and reconstructive surgery to lead normal lives.

The calendar, which will go on sale throughout Italy next week, will raise funds for the Italian League to Prevent Tumors.

Franchelli said in a telephone interview from the hospital that it was not difficult to find the six women patients who allowed themselves to be photographed naked after surgery. The women each represent two months.

"Still, they are courageous women because there still is too much of a stigma attached to breast cancer and reconstructive breast surgery," she said.

In one of the pictures, a woman wearing only a black bow tie and a white silk scarf. She is smiling broadly.

In another, a woman contemplates her reconstructed breast in a meditative pose and in a third, a romantic red rose rests on one of the reconstructed breasts.

"These pictures are artistic, nothing shocking and no one was trying to be sexy," Franchelli said.

"We were trying to give a voice to our patients so that women can tell other women that they too can cope with something as traumatic as breast cancer," she said.

Franchelli, a 40-year-old plastic surgeon at the northeastern city's cancer hospital, said some people had complained the calendar was in bad taste but most calls had been supportive.

She said she got the idea from a patient several years ago who was mentioning how pin-up women are used in Italian calendars.

To show that breast cancer can strike women of all ages, the patients photographed ranged in age from 30 to 68.