Born in
Bisceglie in the
province of Bari, he moved to Sydney with his fisherman father at the age of 8. After initial training at the
New South Wales Academy of Art, he furthered his study of sculpture and drawing in
Naples, before returning to
Fremantle with his father in 1898. Later that year, he completed his first commission – a bust of
Sir John Forrest that now stands in the main entrance hall of
Parliament House in Perth. His 1902 statue of Alexander Forrest was the first such statue of a prominent public figure to be completed in
Perth. In 1915 he also created the 3.7 metre bronze statue of
Eirene and attendants which stood atop the seven-storey AMP Chambers at the corner of
St George's Terrace and
William Street, which was removed when the building was demolished in 1972 and now stands on a man-made lake in the suburb of Floreat Waters. Porcelli also completed
war memorials in
Kalgoorlie, Boulder,
Victoria Park,
West Leederville and
Moora, and numerous headstones in
Karrakatta and
Fremantle Cemeteries, including that of Sir
John Forrest in 1918. After a period of work in
Melbourne in the 1920s, he returned to Perth in 1939, where he died in 1943. He is buried in
Karrakatta Cemetery. ==Major works==