Part of this was due to the subject – a victim of Sulla's proscription returning to Rome to find his wife dead and his house in mourning – in which an allusion was found to the turmoil of the French Revolution.

Guérin was commissioned to paint for the Madeleine a scene from the history of St Louis, but his health prevented him from accomplishing what he had begun, and in 1822 he accepted the post of director of the French Academy in Rome, which in 1816 he had refused.

He now attempted to complete Pyrrhus and Priam, a work which he had begun at Rome, but in vain; his health had finally broken down, and in the hope of improvement he returned to Italy with Horace Vernet.

Shortly after his arrival at Rome Baron Guérin died, on 6 July 1833, and was buried in the church of La Trinité de Monti by the side of Claude Lorrain.

A heroic portrait by Guerin hangs in the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Baltimore.