Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    From $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Sacred Texts of the World (Transcript)
    Sacred Texts of the World (Transcript)
    Sacred Texts of the World (Transcript)
    Ebook711 pages14 hours

    Sacred Texts of the World (Transcript)

    By Grant Hardy

    4/5

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    Sacred Texts of the World is the companion book to the audio/video series of the same name. It contains a full transcript of the series as well as the complete course guidebook which includes lecture notes, bibliography, and more.

    About this series:

    No era of artistic achievement is as renowned as the Renaissance, and no country holds a higher place in that period than Italy. The supreme works created in Florence, Rome, Venice, and other Italian cities by such masters as Leonardo da Vinci, Botticelli, Michelangelo, Raphael, and Titian have never equaled and have established a canon of beauty that pervades Western culture to this day. These Arts, in their highest province, are not addressed to the gross senses, but to the desires of the mind, to that spark of divinity which we have within. —Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1786 To view these works is to enter a world that is incomparably rich, filled with emotion and drama that is palpable, though sometimes mysterious to our modern sensibility. To study these works with an expert is to penetrate that mystery and gain a new appreciation for how these masterpieces were created and what they meant to the artists and people of the time. Experience the Vision of Great Art with an Expert Guide Professor William Kloss is your guide through this visual feast in an artist-centered survey that explores hundreds of paintings and sculptures by scores of artists. An independent art historian, scholar, and curator, Professor Kloss is a frequent lecturer for the Smithsonian Institution's seminar and travel program. He has served on the Committee for the Preservation of the White House by presidential appointment since 1990, and he is the author of several books and exhibition catalogs. Commenting on Kloss's eloquent writing, The Washington Post marveled that his pointed and persuasive perceptions are not easily resisted. Unlock the Mysteries of Renaissance Art Take Botticelli's Primavera, a bewitching allegory of springtime featuring two gods, three goddesses, the three Graces, and Cupid, set in a lush orange grove. Its sheer beauty transfixes visitors to Florence's Uffizi Gallery, where it hangs today. But what does it mean? Noting that for centuries scholars have debated the painting's symbolism, Professor Kloss directs your attention to a few intriguing details: The orange tree foliage makes a halo around the central figure of Venus, connecting her with the Virgin Mary. According to Renaissance thought, Venus may also represent humanitas—culture or civilization.On the right, flowers float from the mouth of the nymph Cloris, and her finger is merging with a flower in the gown of Flora, goddess of spring. One is metamorphosing into the other as spring arrives in this ideal glade of divine love. Meanwhile on the left, Mercury is waving his staff to dispel a tiny patch of clouds. He is clearing the atmosphere—the intellect—for the three Graces who represent culture and the arts. Professor Kloss then points out another equally rich interpretation and concludes, A bad artist could do terrible things with such a complex story, but fortunately a great artist was at hand to visualize this elaborate subject. The same can be said for all of the artists in this course, and it is through their distinctive styles, innovations, and matchless skill that you learn about this remarkable period. What Is the Renaissance? These lectures cover art history at the times of the Early Renaissance and the High Renaissance, which extended from about 1400 to about 1520. Italy is the first and principal location of the Renaissance, and it was in Florence that it took its deepest root. The word renaissance means rebirth, and it is the name given to the transition from medieval to modern times in Europe, when the rediscovery of ancient Greek and Roman culture sparked a creative revolution in the humanities, the sciences, and the arts. Humanism, a philosophical, literary, and artistic ideal, went hand in hand with thi
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherThe Great Courses
    Release dateFeb 7, 2014
    ISBN9781629970431
    Sacred Texts of the World (Transcript)

    Related to Sacred Texts of the World (Transcript)

    Related ebooks

    Art For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • UNLIMITED

      More From Lion’s Roar

      Jul 20, 2021

      More From Lion’s Roar
      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Book Briefs

      May 8, 2018

      Without tsewa, is there any other source of happiness?” This is the question posed by Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche in TRAINING IN TENDERNESS (Shambhala 2018). Always circling back to this Tibetan word meaning love, tenderness, or warmth, Kongtrul pushes

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Ask The Teachers

      Feb 11, 2020

      BHANTE SUJATO: In 2014 I coauthored, with Bhikkhu Brahmali, a book called The Authenticity of the Early Buddhist Texts. The “early Buddhist texts” are essentially the main parts of the Pali suttas and vinaya, as well as the cognate texts in Chinese a

      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Beginner’s Mind

      Mar 19, 2019

      WITH SO MANY lineages, practices, and unique terms, the world of Tibetan Buddhism can be confusing. Here is a short primer on the four main schools and some of their key practices. Gelugpa: Established in the fifteenth century, the Gelugpas are the n

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Buddhadharma ON BOOKS

      Dec 5, 2023

      THE FRENCH-BORN writer and photographer Matthieu Ricard earned a PhD in molecular genetics in 1972, and then walked away from his career to become a Buddhist monk in the Tibetan tradition. Today, Ricard is perhaps best known for his collaborations wi

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Motherhood Is More Than a Metaphor

      Jun 1, 2021

      Motherhood Is More Than a Metaphor
      12 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Fresh Bread, Ancient Recipes

      Mar 7, 2023

      AROUND THE TIME I was sixteen, I started exploring lots of different philosophical systems and practices: Samkhya, Advaita Vedanta, Kriya, Hatha, and Bhakti yoga, Sufism, Jainism, Christian mysticism, Kabbalah, you name it. Prior to that time, any ex

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Buddhadharma ON BOOKS

      Jun 20, 2024

      THE SANSKRIT TERM dhyana is translated as “meditation.” As Buddhism has spread across Asia, different communities have come to interpret dhyana practices in various ways. Theravada Buddhists, for example, understand dhyana—translated into the Pali la

      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Women Who Show Us The Way

      Mar 23, 2021

      Women Who Show Us The Way
      6 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Book Briefs

      Feb 6, 2018

      Should Vajrayana practitioners eat meat? Tibetans have long wrestled with this question, as Geoffrey Barstow elucidates in FOOD OF SINFUL DEMONS: MEAT, VEGETARIANISM, AND THE LIMITS OF BUDDHISM IN TIBET (Columbia 2017). In their discussions of ethica

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Thich Nhat Hanh, Home at Last

      May 7, 2019

      Thich Nhat Hanh, Home at Last
      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Was There a Fifth Noble Truth?

      Jan 22, 2019

      MORE THAN TWENTY YEARS have passed since twenty-eight fragile birch bark scrolls, now known to be the oldest surviving Buddhist manuscripts in the world, came to light. Dating back to as early as the first century BCE, the scrolls—originating in the

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Book Briefs

      May 7, 2019

      N 1940 IN NEPAL, Chittadhar Hrdaya was arrested for publishing poems in the Newari language, an act regarded as subversive by Nepal’s ruling Rana dynasty. During his subsequent five-year imprisonment, he wrote The Epic of the Buddha: His Life and Tea

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      One Religion, Many Gods

      Apr 8, 2022

      One Religion, Many Gods
      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      The Sakyadhita Movement

      Aug 13, 2019

      The Sakyadhita Movement
      9 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Dharma Faqs

      Jul 23, 2019

      Dharma Faqs
      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      For Life’s Big Questions, Tibetan Buddhist Monks And Nuns Try A Scientific Approach

      Jul 26, 2018

      A program teaching Buddhist monks about neuroscience and related fields was inspired by a personal relationship between the Dalai Lama and a psychological anthropologist in the U.S.

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Path Of Fierce Questioning

      Nov 17, 2020

      Path Of Fierce Questioning
      5 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Zen In Vietnam: The Making Of A Tradition

      Jun 28, 2022

      Zen In Vietnam: The Making Of A Tradition
      11 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Lessons Of The Gandharan Manuscripts

      Feb 5, 2019

      Lessons Of The Gandharan Manuscripts
      10 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Lack Of Hindu Education In SA

      Feb 17, 2021

      MY INTEREST in Hinduism began when I was in my first year at high school in Johannesburg. I have spent all the years of my life since then studying Hinduism at the highest levels of its expression. I regard myself as being in a position to say that H

      1 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Forming Spiritual Leaders

      Jul 19, 2022

      ON A TUESDAY AFTERNOON at the Institute of Buddhist Studies (IBS) in Berkeley, CA, Dr. Nancy Lin is leading a discussion about the Bodhicaryavatara, Shantideva’s foundational eighth-century Buddhist text known in English as The Way of the Bodhisattva

      3 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Shinzen Young

      Nov 17, 2020

      I SOMETIMES SAY: “I’m a Jewish-American Buddhist teacher who got turned on to comparative mysticism by an Irish-Catholic priest and who has developed a Burmese-Japanese fusion practice inspired by the spirit of quantified science.” I was born in 1944

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Bhante Buddharakkhita

      Sep 27, 2022

      I WAS BORN into a Roman Catholic family in Uganda. I didn’t know there were religions other than Christianity and Islam until 1990, when I went to India to study business at a university in Chandigarh. Two of my hostel-mates were Thai Buddhist monks,

      2 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Book Briefs

      Nov 12, 2019

      Jamgon Kongtrul (1813–1899), often credited as the founder of Rimé, has made an immeasurable impact on modern Tibetan Buddhism, perhaps especially as it’s understood in the West. In The Life of Jamgom Kongtrul the Great: Tibet’s Great Treasure Holder

      4 min read

    • UNLIMITED

      Book Briefs

      Dec 6, 2022

      WE CALL SHAKYAMUNI the “historical Buddha,” yet mostly treat him as a quasi-mythic figure who transcends time and space, whose actual existence on our planet is but a faint memory. Xinru Liu, a historian of ancient India, would beg to differ. In Earl

      4 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for Sacred Texts of the World (Transcript)

    4/5

    4 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      Sacred Texts of the World (Transcript) - Grant Hardy

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1