This post details another adventure using Scholar’s Workbench from METAscripta, this time using an icon of the Anastasis/Resurrection from the Harvard Art Museum. I was able to copy the IIIF manifest link from the Harvard Art Museum’s website and paste it into Scholar’s Workbench such that it was added to a new collection.

Unlike the manuscript I was working with in my last post about using Scholar’s Workbench, this image came with several annotations already embedded into the manifest. These seem to have been AI generated, and showcase the limitations of that technology at the current time. To understand the symbology used in the icon, requires some knowledge of iconographic conventions. Not being equipped with such knowledge, the computer generated annotations are rather humorous, such as this one struggling to explain the emotional state of King Solomon, who had been annotated as a 28-44 year old female.

Similarly, the inscription tells us this is an icon of the Anastasis (Greek for Resurrection), transliterated into Cyrillic lettering and the computer understandably had some difficulty making sense of it.

My annotations I hope clear up who and what the main characters and actions featured in the icon represent according to convention. In doing so, I used some different annotation options, including for many figures, the freeform tool that allows one to trace around a non-geometric shape, such as a person. Here are examples of this being used for Kings Solomon and David, John the Baptist, Adam, and Eve. After the shape is drawn, it can be adjusted by moving the points to better match the contours of the figure.

I also used this freeform tool around the mandorla (almond) shape surrounding Christ.

I also used the line tool to trace around the doors of hades broken under Christ’s feet, naturally in cruciform shape. This tool draws straight lines between points, making it well suited for this shape.

For other features I used simpler shapes used earlier, like the circle here used to call out the binding of Satan, and the same tool being drawn into a long oval to explain what the inscription means.

The IIIF manifest with my annotations is: https://annotate.metascripta.org/manifests/905753465/11/3111ad025a0d9857bd0352b0893c0b25.json