Hyman Bloom admired works by artists such as Soutine ("Carcass of Beef", 1924) and Rembrandt ("Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp", 1632; "The Slaughtered Ox", 1655) that explored similar themes. He called the colors of a decaying corpse he had seen in a morgue "harrowing" and yet "beautiful...iridescent and pearly." Many of Bloom's paintings feature rabbis, usually holding the Torah. According to Bloom, his intentions were more artistic than religious. He began questioning his Jewish faith early in life, and painted rabbis, he claimed, because that was what he knew. Over the course of his career he produced dozens of paintings of
The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp referenced the painting at the bottom of page 10, where the characters observe the disembowelment of a fish. The 2011 video game "" references the painting in both in-game portraits that can be found on the wall and in a certain cinematic trailer, featuring the main protagonist Adam Jensen as the cadaver as Dr. Nicolaes and his students study his charred and ruined arms, which in the actual story become amputated and replaced with mechanical limbs. The painting is discussed by the narrator (a young man) and his mother during a visit to the Met in "The Goldfinch", a 2013