He was never offered another teaching position. Only the education minister defended Klimt, and when Klimt was elected to be a professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in 1901 the government refused to ratify the action. Eighty-seven faculty members protested against the murals, and in 1901 a public prosecutor was called in and the issue even reached the Parliament of Austria, the first time that a cultural debate had ever been raised there, but in the end no action was taken.

The paintings also drew the standard charges of obscenity which Klimt often faced. The Faculty Paintings were attacked by critics when they were presented, as each painting broke different cultural taboos, contradicting the trend of the era to 'sublimate reality and to only present its more favourable aspects' (Neret). The conflict in Jurisprudence has been seen as 'psycho-sexual'. They are shown as the Eumenides, punishing the condemned man with an octopus's deadly embrace. Jurisprudence, too, is laden with anxiety: a condemned man is depicted surrounded by three female furies and a sea monster, while in the background, the three goddesses of Truth, Justice, and Law look on. For a rough composition draft of the painting see here. An editorial in the Medizinische Wochenschrift complained that the painter had ignored doctors' two main achievements, prevention and cure. Upon display of the painting in 1901, he was attacked by critics. Klimt conveyed an ambiguous unity of life and death, with nothing to celebrate the role of medicine or the science of healing. At the bottom of the painting Hygieia stood with the Aesculapian snake around her arm and the cup of Lethe in her hand, turning her back to mankind. The only link between the floating woman and the river of bodies is two arms, the woman's and a man's as seen from behind. A skeleton represented death in the river of life. Beside it was a young nude female who floated in space, with a newborn infant at her feet, representing life. It featured a column of semi-nude figures on the right hand side of the painting, representing the river of life. Medicine was the second painting, presented in March 1901 at the tenth Secession Exhibition.

University of vienna