The image collection associated with the Ars Anatomica (Imaging the Renaissance Body) project has finally been restored into the LUNA image service in all its glory, here.

This project was a collaboration between the University of Edinburgh, University of Glasgow and the Royal College of Physicians, and was completed in 2005. It’s full of fascinating images of flayed bodies and skeletons, illustrating the writings on anatomy of Andreas Vesalius and Juan de Valverde.

The collection’s emergence is also interesting from a development perspective. While the general migration work to take it from the old Insight platform was done some time ago, we felt uncomfortable putting it live due to a significant lack of metadata on a number of items. However, in October, we unearthed the original data and were able to load this back into the Vernon Collections Management System and put through the standard processes to re-create the collection in LUNA. We have also put in place enhanced workflow steps which, if desired, would allow further cataloguing to take place in Vernon and keep it in sync with LUNA.