According to the National Gallery's exhibition curator Christopher Riopelle, both "Charles I Insulted" and Delaroche's other painting, "Marie-Antoinette Before the Tribunal", painted fifteen years later in 1851, "suggest episodes of the suffering of Christ". Riopelle added that Delaroche's "obsession with English royalist history" was "classic displacement of what you want to talk about but can't, because it's still so raw and recent", particularly referring to the execution of Louis XVI of France in January 1793, and nine months later of his Queen Marie Antoinette.