Antonio Lucio Vivaldi was born in Venice, the capital of the Republic of Venice in 1678. He was baptized immediately after his birth at his home by the midwife, leading it to be believed that his life was somehow in danger. Though not known for certain, the immediate baptism was most likely due to his poor health or to an earthquake that shook the city that day. In the trauma of the event, Vivaldi’s mother may have dedicated him to the priesthood. 

Vivaldi’s parents were Giovanni Battista Vivaldi and Camilla Calicchio, as recorded in the register of San Giovanni in Bragora. Vivaldi had five siblings: Margarita Gabriela, Cecilia Maria, Bonaventura Tomaso, Zanetta Anna, and Francesco Gaetano. Giovanni Battista, a barber before becoming a professional violinist, taught him to play violin and then toured Venice playing the violin with his young son. He probably taught him at an early age, as evidenced by Vivaldi’s extensive musical knowledge at age 24 when he started working at the Ospedale della Pietà. Giovanni Battista was one of the founders of the Sovvegno dei musicisti di Santa Cecilia, a sort of trade union for musicians and composers. The president of the association was Giovanni Legrenzi, the maestro di cappella at St. Mark's Basilica and noted early baroque composer. His father may have been a composer himself: in 1689, an opera titled La Fedeltà sfortunata was composed by a Giovanni Battista Rossi, and this was the name under which Vivaldi's father had joined the Sovvegno di Santa Cecilia ("Rossi" for "Red", because of the colour of his hair, a family trait).

Vivaldi had a health problem, probably a form of asthma, which did not prevent him from learning to play the violin, compose or take part in many musical activities. It did however stop him from playing wind instruments because of shortness of breath. At the age of 15 in the year of 1693, he began studying to become a priest. In 1703, at the age of 25, Vivaldi was ordained a priest and was soon nicknamed il Prete Rosso, "The Red Priest", because of his red hair. Not long after his ordination, in 1704, he was given a reprieve from celebrating the Holy Mass because of his ill health. Vivaldi only said mass as a priest a few times because of his strettezza di petto, or what we interpret to be asthma. In September 1703, Vivaldi became maestro di violino (master of violin) at an orphanage called the Pio Ospedale della Pietà (Devout Hospital of Mercy) in Venice. While Vivaldi is most known as a composer, he was regarded as an exceptional technical violinist as well. Vivaldi was only 25 when he started working at the Ospedale della Pietà and he composed most of his major works while working there for the next thirty years of his life. There were four such institutions in Venice; their purpose was to give shelter and education to children who were abandoned, orphaned, or whose families could not support them. His relationship with the board of directors of the Ospedale was often strained. The board had to take a vote every year on whether to keep a teacher. The vote on Vivaldi was seldom unanimous, and in 1709, he lost his job after a 7 against 6 vote. After a year as a freelance musician, he was recalled by the Ospedale with a unanimous vote in 1711; clearly the board had realized the importance of his role by then. In 1713, he became responsible for the musical activity of the institution. Vivaldi was promoted to maestro di' concerti (music director) in 1716.

It was during these years that Vivaldi wrote much of his music, including many operas and concerti. In 1705, the first collection (Connor Cassara) of his works was published: his Opus 1 is a collection of 12 sonatas for two violins and basso continuo, still in a conventional style. His first printed collection, written in 1705, was published by Giuseppe Sala. In 1709, a second collection of 12 sonatas for violin & basso continuo appeared (Opus 2). The real breakthrough came with his first collection of 12 concerti for one, two, and four violins with strings, L'estro armonico (Opus 3), which was published in Amsterdam in 1711 by Estienne Roger. L’estro armonico was dedicated to Grand Prince Ferdinand of Tuscany, a musician himself who sponsored many musicians like Alessandro Scarlatti and Handel. Vivaldi probably met him in Venice. This was a resounding success all over Europe, and was followed in 1714 by La stravaganza (Opus 4), a collection of concerti for solo violin and strings. La stravaganza was dedicated to an old violin student of Vivaldi’s, Vettor Dolfin, who was also a Venetian noble.

In February 1711, Vivaldi and his father went to Brescia, where his setting of the Stabat Mater (RV 621) was played as part of a religious festival. The work seems to have been written in haste: the string parts are simple, the music of the first three movements is repeated in the next three, and not all the text is set. However, and in part as a consequence of the forced essentiality of the music, the work reveals musical and emotional depth and is one of his early masterpieces.

In 1718, Vivaldi began to travel. Despite his frequent travels, the Pietà paid him to write two concerti a month for the orchestra and to rehearse with them at least five times when in Venice. The Pietà's records show that he was paid for 140 concerti between 1723 and 1733. In the Venice of the early 18th century, opera was the most popular musical entertainment and the most profitable for the composer. There were several theaters competing for the public attention. Vivaldi started his career as opera writer in undertone: his first opera, Ottone in villa (RV 729) was performed not in Venice, but at the Garzerie theater in Vicenza in 1713. The following year, Vivaldi made the jump to Venice and became the impresario of the theater Sant'Angelo in Venice, where his opera Orlando finto pazzo (RV 727) was performed. However, the work did not meet the public's taste, and Vivaldi had to close it after a couple of weeks and replace it with a rerun of a different work already given the previous year. In 1715, he presented Nerone fatto Cesare (RV 724, lost), with music by seven different composers, of which he was the leader, with eleven arias. This time it was a success, and in the late season, Vivaldi planned to give an opera completely of his own hand, Arsilda regina di Ponto (RV 700). However, the state censor blocked the performance, objecting to the plot: the main character, Arsilda, falls in love with another woman, Lisea, who is pretending to be a man. Vivaldi managed to get the opera through censorship the following year, and it was eventually performed to a resounding success. In this same period of time, the Pietà commissioned several liturgical works. The most important were two oratorios. The first, Moyses Deus Pharaonis, (RV 643) is lost. The second, Juditha triumphans (RV 644), composed in 1716, is one of his sacred masterpieces. It was commissioned to celebrate the victory of the Republic of Venice against the Turks and the recapture of the island of Corfù. In the same year, 1716, Vivaldi wrote and produced two more operas, L'incoronazione di Dario (RV 719) and La costanza trionfante degli amori e degli odi (RV 706). The latter was so popular that it was re-edited and represented two years later with the title Artabano re dei Parti (RV 701, lost) and was eventually performed in Prague in 1732.

His modern operatic style caused him some trouble with other more conservative musicians, like Benedetto Marcello, a magistrate and amateur musician who wrote a pamphlet denouncing him and the modern style of opera. While Vivaldi composed many operas in his time, he never reached the prominence of other great composers like Alessandro Scarlatti, Leonardo Leo, and Baldassare Galuppi, as evidenced by his inability to keep a production running for any period of time in any major opera house. His most successful operas were La constanza trionfante and Farnace which garnered six revivals each.

In 1717 or 1718, Vivaldi was offered a new prestigious position as Maestro di Cappella of the court of the prince Phillip of Hesse-Darmstadt, governor of Mantua. He moved there for three years and produced several operas, among which was Tito Manlio (RV 738). In 1721, he was in Milan, presenting the pastoral drama La Silvia (RV 734, lost) and again the next year with the oratorio L'adorazione delli tre re magi al bambino Gesù (RV 645, also lost). The next big step was a move to Rome in 1722, where his operas introduced the new style and where the new pope Benedict XIII invited Vivaldi to play for him. In 1725, he returned to Venice, where he produced four operas in the same year. It is also in this period that he wrote the Four Seasons, four violin concertos depicting natural scenes in music. While three of the concerti are of original conception, the first, "Spring", borrows motifs from a Sinfonia in the first act of his opera "Il Giustino", composed at the same time as The Four Seasons. They were published as the first four of a collection of twelve, Il cimento dell'armonia e dell'inventione, his Opus 8, published in Amsterdam by Le Cène in 1725.

During his time in Mantua Vivaldi became acquainted with an aspiring young singer, Anna Tessieri Giro, who was to become his student, protégée, and favorite prima donna. Anna, along with her older half-sister Paolina, became part of Vivaldi's entourage and regularly accompanied him on his many travels. There was speculation about the nature of Vivaldi's and Giro's relationship, but no evidence to indicate anything beyond friendship and professional collaboration. Although Vivaldi’s relationship with Anna Giro was questioned, he adamantly denies any romantic relationship in a letter to his patron Bentivoglio November 16th, 1737.

During the height of his career, Vivaldi received commissions from European nobles and royalty. The wedding cantata Gloria e Imeneo (RV 687) was written for the marriage of Louis XV. Opus 9, La Cetra, was dedicated to Emperor Charles VI. In 1728, Vivaldi had the chance to meet the Emperor in person when he came to Trieste to oversee the construction of a new port. Charles gave him the title of knight, a gold medal, and an invitation to come to Vienna. On his part, Vivaldi gave Charles a manuscript copy of La Cetra; this is a set of concerti almost completely different from the one published with the same title as Opus 9. Probably the printing had been delayed and Vivaldi was forced to gather an improvised collection. In 1730, accompanied by his father, he traveled to Vienna and Prague, where his opera Farnace (RV 711) was presented. Some late operas marked the collaboration with two of Italy's major writers of the time.L'Olimpiade and Catone in Utica were written by Pietro Metastasio, the major representative of the Arcadian movement and court poet in Vienna. La Griselda was rewritten by the young Carlo Goldoni from an earlier libretto by Apostolo Zeno.

Vivaldi's life, like those of many composers of the time, ended in financial difficulties. His compositions no longer held the high esteem they once did in Venice; changing musical tastes quickly made them outmoded, and Vivaldi, in response, chose to sell off sizeable numbers of his manuscripts at paltry prices to finance a migration to Vienna. The reasons for Vivaldi's departure from Venice are unclear, but it seems likely that he wished to meet Charles VI, who appreciated his compositions (Vivaldi dedicated La Cetra to Charles in 1727), and take up the position of a composer in the Imperial Court. When Vivaldi departed from Venice, he may have stopped in Graz to see Anna Giro before settling in Vienna. It is ever more likely that Vivaldi went to Vienna to stage operas, especially as his place of residence was near the Kärntnertortheater. However, shortly after Vivaldi's arrival at Vienna, Charles died. This tragic stroke of bad luck left the composer without royal protection and a source of income. Vivaldi died not long after, on the night between 27 and July 28, 1741, of internal infection in a house owned by the widow of a Viennese saddlemaker. On July 28 he was buried in a simple grave at the Hospital Burial Ground in Vienna. Vivaldi's funeral took place at St. Stephen's Cathedral, where the young Joseph Haydn was then a choir boy. His burial spot is next to the Karlskirche in Vienna, at the site of the Technical Institute.