Focusing on Central and Southern Tibet, these two beautifully illustrated volumes are the product not only of years of scholarship but also, importantly, of the many visits and field-research trips the author made over the last twenty-five years. Providing a fundamental work of reference, they include over 1,100 illustrations, most of them recent photographs by the author, and many rare and previously unpublished historical photographs, as well as over 100 architectural plans and drawings. Detailed descriptions and interpretations of the buildings, art, and furnishings of all major monasteries and significant secular buildings, as well as numerous references to both historical Tibetan, Sanskrit, and Chinese texts and to works of scholarly research in the West and in China, make this work a unique source of information for both the specialist and the general reader. This extensive documentation on the sacred art and monuments of Buddhist Tibet also provides a deeply researched history of the cultural and religious circumstances in which the sites and relics were created. AUTHOR: Michael Henss is a Swiss art historian with a PhD in Asian art history. His pioneering survey Tibet - Die Kulturdenkmaler (Zurich 1981) was followed by books on the Kalachakra initiation ritual, on the cultural sites in Mustang (1993), and on Tibetan painting and sculpture (2008), and by around 100 scholarly articles on Tibetan and Asian art. He was the co-curator of the major exhibition The Dalai Lamas in Zurich and Rotterdam (2005/2006) and has lectured widely in the West and in China. 1100 illustrations
