Skip to content
Back Home
Search

All Results

Generic filters
Search in excerpt
  • About
      • Smarthistory is public art history
      • Is Smarthistory reliable?
      • Press coverage
      • Board of Advisors and Board of Trustees
      • Major donors
      • Smarthistory partners
      • Content editors and contributors
      • Recommended by…
      • A Smarthistory timeline
      • Contribute an essay to Smarthistory
      • Contact Us
      • Support our work
      • At Smarthistory, the Center for Public Art History, we believe art has the power to transform lives and to build understanding across cultures. We believe that the brilliant histories of art belong to everyone, no matter their background.

        With 503 contributors from 201 colleges, universities, museums, and research centers, Smarthistory is the most-visited art history resource in the world.
  • Histories of Art
      • Prehistoric
        • Overview of Prehistoric
          • Paleolithic
          • Neolithic
      • Africa
        • Overview of Africa
            • East Africa
            • West Africa
            • North Africa
            • Southern Africa
            • Central Africa
      • Americas
        • Overview of Americas to 1900
            • North America to 1500
            • North America 1500 – 1900
            • South America to 1500
            • South America 1500 – 1900
      • Asia
        • Overview of Asia
            • Hinduism and Buddhism
            • China
            • Japan
            • Korea
            • South Asia
            • Afghanistan
            • Southeast Asia
            • The Himalayas
      • Ancient Mediterranean
        • Overview of Ancient Mediterranean
            • Ancient Near East
            • Egyptian
            • Aegean
            • Greek
            • Nabataean
            • Etruscan
            • Roman
            • Palmyra
      • Medieval Europe & Byzantine
        • Overview of Medieval Europe + Byzantium
            • A beginner’s guide
            • Christianity and art
            • Judaism and art
            • The medieval book
            • Early Christian
            • Byzantine
            • Carolingian
            • Ottonian
            • Romanesque
            • Gothic Art
            • The crusades
      • The Islamic World
        • Overview of the Islamic World
          • Early Period
          • Medieval Period
          • Later period
      • Europe 1300-1800
        • Overview of 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 and Counter-Reformation
              • Baroque: 17th century
              • Rococo: early to mid 18th century
              • Neoclassicism: late 18th century
              • British: 18th century
      • Europe 1800-1900
        • Overview of Europe: 19th century
            • Romanticism
            • Early Photography
            • Victorian art
            • Realism
            • Second Empire
            • Impressionism
            • Post-Impressionism
            • Symbolism / Art Nouveau
            • The Peredvizhniki
      • Oceania
        • Overview of Oceania
            • Lapita
            • Polynesia
            • Melanesia
            • Micronesia
            • Australia
      • Modernisms 1900-1980
        • Overview of Modernisms 1900 – 1980
            • A beginner’s guide
            • Fauvism + Expressionism
            • Cubism + Early Abstraction
            • Dada + Surrealism
            • German art between the wars
            • Latin American modernism
            • American art to WWII
            • Postwar American art
            • Postwar European art
            • Conceptual + Performance art
            • Post Minimalism
            • Global vanguard
            • Architecture + Design
      • Art since 1980
        • Overview of art since 1980
            • Cold War Germany and after
            • Art in the AIDS era
            • Post-Cultural Revolution China
            • Apartheid-era South Africa
            • Young British Artists and art as commodity
            • Pictures Generation and postmodern photography
            • Revisiting histories
            • Mapping and migration
            • Figuration, the body, and representation
            • Social practice
            • Public memory and the politics of place
            • Landscape and ecology
            • Digital culture
            • Assemblage and materiality
            • Spirituality and transcendence
  • Guided learning
      • Start here
          • OVERVIEW
              • Looking at art
              • Approaches to art history
              • Understanding religion in art
              • Understanding museums
              • For the very beginner
              • seeingamericaFeatured | Art that brings U.S. history to life
      • Courses in art history & history
          • OVERVIEW
              • Expanding the Renaissance – shifting the conversation
              • Seeing America – a portal to American history and art
              • ARCHES – At-Risk Cultural Heritage Education Series
              • Short courses – spend an hour — learn a lot!
              • Across cultures – An interconnected world is not as recent as we think.
              • Teaching with images – For K-12 teachers
              • Syllabi / AP & A-level courses
              • Art Appreciation
              • A history of photography
              • Creating + conserving
      • Smarthistory books
        • Overview – More titles coming soon!
            • AP® Art History (vol. 1) – nos. 1 – 47
            • AP® Art History (vol. 2) – nos. 48-98
            • AP® Art History (vol. 3) – nos. 99 – 152
            • AP® Art History (vol. 4) – nos. 153 – 191
            • AP® Art History (vol. 5) – nos. 192 – 250
            • Ancient Near Eastern art
            • Ancient Egyptian Art
            • Ancient Aegean Art
            • Ancient Greek Art
            • Ancient Etruscan art
            • Ancient Roman art
            • Guide to Italian art in the 1300s
      • Virtual visits – museums & sites
        • Overview – art by location
          • Austria
          • China
          • Egypt
          • France
          • Germany
          • Greece
          • Italy
          • India
          • Japan
          • Mexico
          • Netherlands
          • Peru
          • Russia
          • Spain
          • Turkey
          • United Kingdom
          • United States
  • Commons
  • Support
      • Donate – Help Smarthistory continue to make a difference
      • Contribute an essay – Help make art history relevant and engaging
      • We created Smarthistory to provide students around the world with the highest-quality educational resources for art and cultural heritage—for free.
Search

over here

Start here

Looking at art
Browse this content
Why art matters
Why art matters (why look at art?)
Must art be beautiful? Picasso’s Old Guitarist
How art can help you analyze
The Power to Look
Alejandro Cesarco, What does looking mean?
What work of art inspired you?
Elements of Art
Line
Shape and Form
Color
Space
Texture
Surface and Depth
Light and shadow
Principles of composition
Balance, symmetry, and emphasis
Movement
Proportion and scale
Pattern, repetition and rhythm, variety and unity
Describing what you see
Introduction to art historical analysis
How to do visual (formal) analysis
Art historical analysis with Goya’s Third of May, 1808
Describing what you see: sculpture
Approaches to art history
Browse this content
An introduction to art history
Browse this content
What is art history and where is it going?
Art history and world art history
Ever wondered… why people become art historians?
Ever wondered…why study art of the past?
Art and empathy
A brief history of the representation of the body in Western painting
A brief history of the representation of the body in Western sculpture
The language of art history
Browse this content
Naturalism, realism, abstraction and idealization
Contrapposto explained
Foreshortening explained
Chiaroscuro explained
Linear perspective explained
Atmospheric perspective explained
Classical orders of architecture explained
Methods of art history
An introduction to iconographic analysis
Brief histories of art and culture
Browse this content
Common questions about dates
What maps tell us
A brief history of the cultures of Asia
A brief history of Western culture
About chronological periods in the Islamic world
Africa historical overview: to 1600
Africa historical overview: from the 1600s to the present
Questions in art history
Browse this content
What is cultural heritage?
Where are the women artists?
Must art be beautiful?
Is there a difference between art and craft?
What's the point of realism?
What made art valuable: then and now?
What does it mean to be an “old master” and to make a “masterpiece”?
Current issues in art history
Browse this content
Why you don’t like art history
Cultural heritage “in crisis”
How Climate Changes Art
The $150,000 Banana
Art about Migration
What does art tell us about gender?
Should Art Be Publicly Funded?
Why Do Corporations Buy Art?
What does resistance look like?
The Case for Copying
The case for nudity
Trending artists
Behind the Banksy Stunt
Tools for understanding museums
Browse this content
The case for museums
A brief history of the art museum
Museums and politics: the Louvre, Paris
Art Museums and (Art) Objects
Artists in and against the Museum
The changing social functions of art museums
Looking at Art Museums
Local art appropriation in France—a study of the loot in the Louvre Museum
Remake the Met
How museums shape meaning
An interview with Fred Wilson about the conventions of museums and race
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
Browse this content
Christianity, an introduction
The Christian Bible
A new pictorial language: the image in Early Medieval art
The life of Christ in medieval and Renaissance art
The lives of Christ and the Virgin in Byzantine art
Who’s who? How to recognize saints…
Architecture and liturgy
The audacity of Christian art
Browse this content
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
Browse this content
Introduction to Islam
The Qur’an
The Five Pillars of Islam
Islamic pilgrimages and sacred spaces
Hajj
The Kaaba
Stories of the modern pilgrimage
The complex geometry of Islamic design
Introduction to mosque architecture
Hinduism
Browse this content
Hinduism and Buddhism, an introduction
Discovering Sacred Texts: Hinduism
Sacred texts in Hinduism
Hindu deities
Beliefs made visible: Hindu art in South Asia
Hindu temples
Varanasi: sacred city
Buddhism
Browse this content
Introduction to Buddhism
The historical Buddha
The Buddha and Buddhist sacred texts
The stupa
Images of Enlightenment: Aniconic vs. Iconic Depictions of the Buddha in India
Four Buddhas at the American Museum of Natural History
Buddhist meditation and chant
Bodh Gaya: center of the Buddhist world
Bodh Gaya: The Site of the Buddha’s Enlightenment
Beliefs made visible: Buddhist art in South Asia
Bodhisattvas, an introduction
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
For the very beginner
Browse this content
Ancient Near Eastern and ancient Egyptian art
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

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 June 22, 2021, https://smarthistory.org/varanasi-sacred-city-2/.

Flickr IconBrowse Smarthistory images for teaching & learning! 

Sign up for our newsletter!

Receive occasional emails about new Smarthistory content.

Composed of rhythmic bands of color

Protractor, Variation I by Frank Stella

Learn more about Masterpiece Moment

sponsored by Bank of America

Check it out here
Close

Smarthistory is a nonprofit organization

At Smarthistory we believe art has the power to transform lives and to build understanding across cultures. We believe that the brilliant histories of art belong to everyone, no matter their background. Smarthistory’s free, award-winning digital content unlocks the expertise of hundreds of leading scholars, making the history of art accessible and engaging to more people, in more places, than any other provider.

  • Donate
  • Subscribe to our newsletter
  • Contact Us
facebook icon
twitter icon
instagram icon
youtube icon
flickr icon
  • About Smarthistory
  • Smarthistory’s blog
  • Contribute an essay
  • Content editors and contributors

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

· © 2021 Smarthistory · Powered by · Designed with the Customizr theme ·

over here