The gospels' account of the several appearances of Christ on earth during the forty days between his Resurrection and Ascension corroborate for the Christian the doctrine of the Resurrection, and are for this reason important themes in art. But the gospels are silent concerning any appearance to his mother. The event was nevertheless deemed to have taken place. St Ambrose wrote in the 4th cent. (Liber de Virginitate), 'Therefore Mary saw the resurrection of the Lord: she was the first to see him and she believed'. The Meditations on the Life of Christ by Pseudo-Bonaventura (c. 1300), gave detailed account of the meeting. On the morning of the Resurrection, while the three Maries made their way to the tomb with their precious ointments, the Virgin remained at home and prayed, in tears, that her Son might come and comfort her. Christ appeared clothed in white and she knelt before him. He too knelt; then they both arose, embraced, and exchanged greetings. The scene she Christ standing before the Virgin dressed in a loose garment, and displays his wounds as proof that it is he. He may hold the banner of the Resurrection The Virgin kneels before him, or at a prie-dieu, or reaches out to embrace hi An alternative type, based oil the presumption that Christ would at that moment have just returned from hell, shows him with a retinue of the redeemed patriarchs and prophets of the Old Testament, led by Adam and Eve. The subject occurs first in the earlier 14th cent. Though its devotion was fostered by the Jesuits, it is less often found in Counter-Reformation art.