Prud'hon, one of the principal representatives of Neoclassicism understook his picture in 1814 for the former Empress Marie-Louise, to whom he had taught drawing. The subject is from the great 17th-century French tragedian Racine. Andromache, shown with her attendant Cephise and her child's nurse, has just rejected Pyrrhus. Pyrrhus's father, Achille, had killed her husband, Hector. Her refusal is signified by embracing her son, in whom she sees Hector's features. Pyrrhus is accompanied by his tutor, Phoenix.

Left incomplete, the picture was finished after Prud'hon's death by a pupil, Charles Boulanger de Boisfrémont, who purchase it from Prud'hon's estate in 1823 and exhibited it in the Salon of 1824. Boisfrémont repainted the gestures ans expressions of Pyrrhus and Phoenix and introduced the vases on the ledge in the background.