In the work, Dr. Nicolaes Tulp is pictured explaining the musculature of the arm to medical professionals. Some of the spectators are various doctors who paid commissions to be included in the painting. The painting is signed in the top-left hand corner Rembrandt. f[ecit] 1632. This may be the first instance of Rembrandt signing a painting with his forename (in its original form) as opposed to the monogramme RHL (Rembrandt Harmenszoon of Leiden), and is thus a sign of his growing artistic confidence.

The corpse is that of the criminal Aris Kindt (alias of Adriaan Adriaanszoon), who was convicted for armed robbery and sentenced to death by hanging. He was executed earlier on the same day of the scene. The face of the corpse is partially shaded, a suggestion of umbra mortis (shadow of death), a technique that Rembrandt was to use frequently.

The French art historian Jean-Marie Clarke points out that the navel of the corpse has the shape of a capital R and connects this observation to the fact that Rembrandt worked intensively on his signatures in 1632, using three types consecutively before settling on the final, first name form in 1633.

Kindt was discussed in the 1999 novel The Rings of Saturn by W. G. Sebald, and plays a significant role in Laird Hunt's 2006 novel The Exquisite. In her 2014 novel, "The Anatomy Lesson" author and journalist Nina Siegal tells the life story of Aris Kindt, based on documents about his criminal history that she discovered in the Amsterdam city archives.

Medical specialists have commented on the accuracy of muscles and tendons painted by the 26-year-old Rembrandt. It is not known where he obtained such knowledge; it is possible that he copied the details from an anatomical textbook. However, in 2006 Dutch researchers recreated the scene with a male cadaver, revealing several discrepancies of the exposed left forearm compared to that of a real corpse. The surgically astute will notice that the origin of the exposed forearm muscles would seem to indicate that the flexor compartment originates at the lateral epicondyle, when it is, in fact, the medial epicondyle. It is the common extensor origin that originates at the lateral epicondyle.

In a 2007 study, the American artist and anatomist David J. Jackowe and his colleagues demonstrated that the mysterious white cord that courses along the ulnar aspect of the cadaver's carpus and little finger, long thought to be either an ulnar nerve variant or artistic error, is most likely the tendon of an anomalous forearm muscle, the accessory abductor digiti minimi.

According to Worldkings.org