Who was the first person to meet Christ after he had risen from death? According to Scripture, it was Mary Magdalene, and the meeting between the two has enjoyed a widespread and continuous presence in Christian art of all media from late antiquity to today. Alongside this authoritative story and popular iconography, church fathers in the Coptic, Byzantine, and Latin traditions produced narratives in which Christ first announced his Resurrection to his mother. James D. Breckenridge (1926–1982), art historian and author of the sole article written on this latter motif’s iconography, argued that the church fathers acted from the premise that the meeting was a logical necessity for Christ to complete his ministry. 

Although acknowledged in written narratives from the 4th century CE, pictorial representation of the scene emerged only in the early 14th century. Examples include a copy of the Meditationes Vitae Christi (Corpus Christi College, University of Oxford, MS 410) and the Kunigunde Passional (National Library of the Czech Republic). The Resurrected Christ appearing to the Virgin was still a rare motif when Rogier van der Weyden included it in the right panel of the Miraflores Triptych (1442–1445), what has since become its epitome. Other Netherlandish artists followed suit, but the motif remained relatively obscure until it (re)surfaced in altarpieces both in the Netherlands and in Valencia around 1480.

Working on a book-length study of this apocryphal encounter between mother and son, my aim is to establish a new critical framework for evaluating this imagery’s employment in various spaces, whether in the convent, in the parish, or at court. Benefiting greatly from the National Gallery’s library and from conversations and correspondence with staff and other visiting scholars at the Center, I reconsidered the motif’s trajectories from illuminations in the early 14th century to altarpieces in the mid-15th century (Chapter 1). Moreover, I carried out an in-depth visual analysis of a painting in the National Gallery’s collection, namely the Washington Apparition (1937.45.1). Painted by an unidentified artist, it is the largest extant depiction of the resurrected Christ appearing to the Virgin, as well as one of the earliest—perhaps the earliest—imitation of Rogier’s quintessential iconography. I concur with the research done by Griet Steyaert and Mark S. Tucker, which argues that the painting formed part of a triptych together with the Philadelphia Crucifixion and the Dijon Annunciation. The Washington Apparition has been part of the National Gallery’s collection since the museum’s inception in 1937 (opening in 1941), but due to divergent views in scholarship it has had a rather disparate display history. Archival files allowed me to productively problematize notions of canonicity and taste regarding Northern European art among collectors and curators from the mid-19th century forward—notions that have indirectly affected scholarship on the motif in question (Chapter 2).

Besides chapters devoted to the first apparitions in the 14th century and to the Rogerian followers in the 15th, my book will consider the many subtle iconographical variations of the motif in Netherlandish and Valencian altarpieces; in artworks commissioned by Isabella I of Castile (1451–1504), Margaret of Austria (1480–1530), and Margaret of York (1446–1503); as one of the scenes in painting cycles with the Life of the Virgin of the Seven Joys of the Virgin; and in images made to promote devotion to the Rosary.

University of Oslo
Beinecke Visiting Senior Fellow, June–August 2024

Ragnhild M. Bø returned to her position as senior lecturer in art history and visual studies at the University of Oslo. In 2025 she will begin a new position as associate professor in the material culture of Christianity at the same institution.