"Still life" is a special art genre typical of ancient artworks, thus named for its similarity to the so-called still lives of sixteenth century European art. This genre had been already described in Greek literature where the fame of some artists and artisans of the Hellenistic age (Peiraikos, Kallikles, Kalates, Antiphilos) is reported and their ability highlighted in portraying special subjects (birds, fish, wildlife, fruits and other food matched to household furnishings), rendered in such a surprisingly real and lively style to be considered among the masterpieces of ancient times, though belonging to an art category considered of a lower level (Plinius, Naturalis Historia, XXXV, 112 and 114).
The still life represented a distinct genre compared to other minor genres of ancient art (such as landscapes, seascapes, representations of animals, architectural backgrounds, paintings representing funerary objects and tools of daily life, or domestic shrines) and was widely used to decorate interior walls of buildings in ancient Campania.
Its origin dates back to xenia paintings which in turn recalled an old tradition of Greek homes reported by Vitruvius (De Architectura, VI 7, 4), which consisted in the landlord giving his guests fresh food as a sign of hospitality. The most important examples of still life in ancient art, especially of Roman times, are widely represented across the interior walls of Pompeii and Herculaneum buildings whose decorative style is considered as belonging to the Pompeian Second and Fourth Style. 

In the so-called Pompeian Second Style, still lives consisted of scenes painted on boards contained in frames with closing shutters standing on shelves as self-contained paintings. No specimen of the original models (pirlakes) from which this tradiction results has been preserved, though their detailed description in fresco paintings (including shutters, nails, strings) give an idea of the role the origina] models played in the decoration of walls at the time. Famous examples of framed paintings with shutters include those from Casa del Criptoportico and from Casa delle Vestali in Pompeii. They consist of representations, sometimes of large dimensions such as the famous still lives in lulia Felix Praedia, of food, fruits, eartb produce and seafood, alternating with the depiction oF tools, objects of daily 1ife, and live animals. In terms of the composition, the subjects depicted are usually placed in a loose arrangement on two tiers, one of which is a step, a small podium, a niche or a window-sill. Foods are usually represented in contrasting arrangements: some items are grouped inside containers such as glass or metal vessels, or in cane baskets, while other are loosely arranged such as such as fruits, eggs, bread, fish, seafood etc. or live animals as cockerels in particular, portrayed in their typical postures (loose, tied or crouched).
Subsequently, when it started being increasingly inserted in a framework of perspective decoration the motif of still life began to change: pictures were reduced in size; the artistic representation of the subjects became more approximate; they were downgraded to the point where they became merely a partial component of the overall framework of the wall decoration.
In the Fourth Pictorial Style still lives are not fitted with frames and shutters any longer, their size has got smaller and they are inserted in less relevant contexts, such as wainscots, perspective constructions or are simple items of a background decorative layout. In the last phase of the Fourth Pompeian style the focus on three-dimensional spaces waned resulting in an increasingly approximated description of the spaces represented.
  

Source
Soprintendenza Archeologica di Pompei