Showing a talent for drawing at an early age, Paolo Vetri moved to Naples in 1867. He became a pupil of Domenico Morelli and married Morelli's daughter, Eleonora. Vetri left suggestive frescos in many churches of Sicily and of the continent. He teached for 30 years in the Institute of the Belle Arti in Naples and he wrote on the theory of the vision and of the perspective.