Jan Porcellis was a Dutch painter, draughtsman and etcher of Flemish origin. His father, Captain Jan Pourchelles or Porcellis, was one of the many Flemish refugees from the renewed Spanish persecutions in 1585 who emigrated to the northern Netherlands. The family settled at Rotterdam, where Jan Porcellis is first recorded on the occasion of his marriage in 1605. He probably started his career as a graphic artist, not a painter, possibly working for the Rotterdam engraver and publisher Jan van Doetechum (d 1630), who published maps, book illustrations and engravings of ship portraits.

Porcellis is first mentioned as a painter in Antwerp, where he moved in 1615 following his bankruptcy in Rotterdam. He became a m...