Back Home
Generic selectors
Exact matches only
Search in title
Search in content
Search in posts
Search in pages

More results

Menu
  • Start here
    • First things first
    • Tools for understanding art
    • Issues in art history
    • Tools for understanding museums
    • Tools for understanding religion in art
    • For the very beginner
    • Close
  • Art histories
    • Prehistoric
      • Paleolithic
      • Neolithic
      • Close
    • Africa
      • East Africa
      • West Africa
      • North Africa
      • Southern Africa
      • Central Africa
      • Close
    • The Americas
      • North America to 1500
      • North America c. 1500 – 1900
      • South America to 1500
      • South America c. 1500 – 1900
      • Close
    • Asia
      • Hinduism and Buddhism: a beginner’s guide
      • China
      • Japan
      • Korea
      • South Asia
      • Afghanistan
      • Southeast Asia
      • The Himalayas
      • Close
    • Ancient Mediterranean
      • Ancient Near East
      • Egyptian
      • Aegean
      • Greek
      • Nabataean
      • Etruscan
      • Roman
      • Palmyra
      • Close
    • Medieval Europe + Byzantine
      • A beginner’s guide
      • Christianity and art
      • Judaism and art
      • The medieval book
      • Early Christian
      • Byzantine
      • Carolingian
      • Ottonian
      • Romanesque
      • Gothic
      • The Crusades
      • Close
    • The Islamic World
      • A beginner’s guide
      • Early Period
      • Medieval Period
      • Later Period
      • Close
    • Europe 1300-1800
      • Italy: 14th century
      • Italy: 15th century
      • Italy: 16th century
      • Northern Europe: 15th century
      • Northern Europe: 16th century
      • Spain: 15th and 16th century
      • Reformation & Counter-Reformation
      • Baroque: 17th century
      • Rococo: early to mid 18th century
      • Neoclassicism: late 18th century
      • British: 18th century
      • Close
    • Europe 1800 – 1900
      • Romanticism
      • Early photography
      • Victorian Art
      • Realism
      • Second Empire
      • Impressionism
      • Post-Impressionism
      • Symbolism/Art Nouveau
      • The Peredvizhniki
      • Close
    • Oceania
      • Lapita people
      • Polynesia
      • Melanesia
      • Micronesia
      • Australia
      • Close
    • Modernisms 1900-1980
      • A beginner’s guide
      • Cubism + early abstraction
      • Dada + Surrealism
      • German art between the wars
      • Latin American Modernism
      • American art to World War II
      • Postwar American Art
      • Post Minimalism
      • Postwar Europe
      • Conceptual + Performance Art
      • Global vanguards
      • Architecture + design
      • Close
    • Global Cultures 1980 – now
      • Appropriation and ideological critique
      • Identity and the body
      • Banality and Kitsch
      • Ritual, spirituality, and transcendence
      • Histories, real and imagined
      • Close
    • Close
  • Themes + topics
    • Seeing America (bringing American history to life)
    • ARCHES (At Risk Cultural Heritage Education Series)
    • Across cultures
    • Creating + conserving
    • Short and long courses
    • AP Art History
    • A-level Art History
    • Contribute an essay!
    • Smarthistory video creation guide
    • Close

Start here

First things first
Browse this content
What is art history and where is it going?
why look at art?
A brief history of Western culture
Common questions about dates
What maps tell us
What made art valuable: then and now
How art can help you analyze
What is cultural heritage?
Tools for understanding art
Browse this content
Introduction to art historical analysis
How to do visual (formal) analysis
Art historical analysis with Goya's Third of May, 1808
A brief history of the representation of the body in Western painting
A brief history of the representation of the body in Western sculpture
Contrapposto explained
Foreshortening explained
Chiaroscuro explained
Linear perspective explained
Atmospheric perspective explained
Classical orders of architecture explained
The Power to Look
Surface and Depth
Light and shadow
Issues in art history
Browse this content
Why you don't like art history
Art must be beautiful
Is there a difference between art and craft?
The Case for Copying
Unlock Art: Where are the Women?
Trending artists
The case for Realism
The case for nudity
Tools for understanding religion in art
Browse this content
Beginner's guide
The five major world religions
A brief history of religion in art
Christianity
Christianity, an introduction
A new pictorial language: The image in Early Medieval art
Standard scenes from the life of Christ in art
Architecture and liturgy
The audacity of Christian art
The problem with Christ
Christ is not like a snail: Signs and symbols
Putting God in his place: here, everywhere, and nowhere
Time and eternity: Yesterday, today, and always
This world and the next: Christ on earth; Christ in heaven
So near and yet so far: visions and thresholds
Unspeakable images: when words fail
Islam
Introduction to Islam
The Five Pillars of Islam
Hajj
The Kaaba
Introduction to mosque architecture
Hinduism
Hinduism and Buddhism, an introduction
Beliefs made visible: Hindu art in South Asia
Hindu temples
Varanasi: sacred city
Buddhism
The historical Buddha
The stupa
Images of Enlightenment: Aniconic vs. Iconic Depictions of the Buddha in India
Four Buddhas at the American Museum of Natural History
Bodh Gaya: center of the Buddhist world
Beliefs made visible: Buddhist art in South Asia
Buddhist Monasteries
Judaism
Judaism, an introduction
Jewish history to the middle ages
Jewish history 1750 to WW II
Jewish history in the post-war period
Tools for understanding museums
Browse this content
The case for museums
A brief history of the art museum
Museums and politics: the Louvre, Paris
The changing social functions of art museums
How museums shape meaning
Remake the Met
For the very beginner
Browse this content
Ancient Greek and Roman art
Medieval and Byzantine art
Renaissance art
Baroque and Rococo
Nineteenth-century art
Introduction to Twentieth-Century Art
Introduction to Contemporary Art
Glossary

Varanasi: sacred city

by Asian Art Museum

Video from the Asian Art Museum

Cite this page as: Asian Art Museum, "Varanasi: sacred city," in Smarthistory, June 30, 2018, accessed March 21, 2019, https://smarthistory.org/varanasi-sacred-city-2/.

At Smarthistory, we’re on a mission to open museums and cultural sites up to the world. We’re creating world-class resources on art and cultural objects for learners from around the globe—for free.

  • About Smarthistory
  • Smarthistory’s blog
  • Contribute an essay
  • Content editors and contributors
  • Donate
  • Follow us on Instagram
  • Subscribe to our newsletter
  • Contact Us

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License

· © 2019 Smarthistory · Designed by Press Customizr · Powered by ·