octopus

[Doug Millison]

...In Gustav Klimt's lost painting Jurisprudence, a gigantic octopus  
threatens to envelop humanity. When it was painted in the first few  
years of the 20th century, this was seen by outraged Austrians as a  
satire on the police, nicknamed "polyps"; but it might just as easily  
be an image of the all-embracing tentacles of the empire in whose last  
days Klimt was working.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2009/sep/17/habsburg-art-titian-moctezuma