Antonio Ponce was born in Valladolid and raised in Madrid where he began his career as a still life painter. In 1624 he was apprenticed to the great still life painter Juan van der Hamen y León, whose niece he married in 1628. His early style owed much to his uncle by marriage, as he adopted the dark backgrounds and ordered, symmetrical compositions which had been favored by the earlier generation of still life painters in Spain. As his career progressed, however, he began to develop his own distinct artistic identity and style, lightening the backgrounds of his paintings to allow for a more complex and subtle play of light and shade, and arranging his compositions more informally.
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