Ponz received a comprehensive education in the humanities, arts and theology at Segorbe, University of Valencia, Gandia and the School of the Three Arts in Madrid. He lived in Italy between 1751 and 1760, where he expanded his knowledge of art. There he met Pedro Francisco Jiménez de Góngora y Luján, Duke of Almodovar, who would become Director of the Spanish Royal Academy of History (1792–1794) and formed a friendship with Anton Raphael Mengs. He studied classical art under Johann Joachim Winckelmann and history with Francisco Pérez Bayer. He settled in Rome and visited Naples in 1759 to view the newly discovered ruins of Pompeii and Herculaneum.
