Paolo Porpora (Paoluccio Napoletano) (1617-1673) – Italian artist of the late Baroque, who was active until the 1650s mainly in Naples. He was born in Naples, From the age of 15 in 1632, according to a found student agreement, he studied for three years with the famous Italian painter Giacomo Recco.

Like his teacher, Porpora specialized in painting fruit and flower still lifes. His still lifes with fish and shells are today attributed to the period of creativity before his move to Rome in 1650. It was there that he met northern artists such as Otto Marseus van Schrieck and Mathias Withoos, at that time some of the most popular still life painters in Holland, who came on a creative trip to Rome. Otto Marseus van Schrieck inspired him to paint still lifes on the theme of “forest landscape” or “undergrowth”.

According to biographers, Paolo Porpora also worked for a time with the religious painter Aniello Falcone, but most likely they, such different artists, were connected by pure collaboration – Porpora supplied Falcone with some still lifes for sale and participated in the painting of flowers in his paintings.

In 1654, Porpora married a Roman woman and remained in Rome for almost twenty years, until his death. Did he have children, who did they become, who was his wife? – a dark spot in his biography. But it is known that the artist became quite famous in a short time in Rome thanks to his beautiful flower still lifes, the beauty and quality of which made him a rival and competitor of Mario Nuzzi himself. Paolo Porpora joined the Roman Academy of St. Luke in 1656-1658.

During these years, he was elected a member of the society “Virtuosi of the Pantheon”, and his contribution to the work of the society was very significant, since after his death, the administration of the society ordered to pay for an annual posthumous mass in honor of his soul, which not all artists were honored with. Among the students of Paolo Porpora were Paolo Cattamara (avant 1675), Giovanni Battista Ruoppolo (1629-ca. 1690) and the Neapolitan artist Onofrio Loth (d. 1717), all of whom also became masters of still life.