[1] The painting depicts how Oliver Cromwell, during the English Civil War, opens the coffin of Charles I in Whitehall to examine his decapitated body.

In his note for the Paris Salon of 1831, he quoted from Les Quatre Stuarts by Chateaubriand (1828), where a proud Cromwell convinces himself that the head is truly separated from the body and remarks that such a well-built man could have lived many more years.

Delaroche's painting inevitably reminded viewers of the French regicide of 1793, especially since France was still shaken by the July Revolution at the time of its completion.

[7] Critic Horace de Viel-Castel dedicated a laudatory review to the painting,[8] while his colleague Victor Schoelcher rated the idea behind it higher than the aesthetics.

[10] This negative judgment on Cromwell Opening the Coffin of Charles I is also found in the writings of Baudelaire and Théophile Gautier ("That pair of bones looking like a violin case"').