Underbrush with Tortoise and Crab

Along with Giuseppe Recco and Giovan Battista Ruoppolo, Paolo Porpora was one of the leading figures in Neapolitan still-life painting during the Baroque. In his first period in Naples he painted fish and kitchen still-lifes in great variety. In the late 1640s he moved to Rome and, after coming into contact with the Northern European masters Matthias Withoos and Otto Marseus van Schrieck, active in the city at that time, he began to produce his famous underbrush paintings. The painting in Nancy is one of the few examples of these works that remained.