The Maze (painting) autobiography "Someone With Me" and his accounts for the Bethlem Royal Hospital, which houses the painting today. The rat spirit at the center cavity of the skull now has a view to the outside, but the outside world is not depicted as an attractive place either. Wheatfield backdrop: The backdrop of the painting is a wheat field being devoured by grasshoppers under the blazing hot sun (this derives from an incident on the Kurelek farm when William was a boy). Kurelek writes, "this refers to my belief that my problems stemmed in a large part from my father taking out
The Ambassadors (Holbein) figure on the right is dressed in clerical clothes. Their flanking of the table, which displays open books, symbols of religious knowledge and even a symbolic link to the Virgin. In contrast, other scholars have suggested the painting contains overtones of religious strife. The conflicts between secular and religious authorities are here represented by Jean de Dinteville, a landowner, and Georges de Selve, the Bishop of Lavaur. The commonly accepted symbol of discord, a lute with a broken string, is included next to a hymnbook in Martin Luther's translation, suggesting strife between scholars and the clergy. The terrestrial globe on