Francesco Maria Veracini was born in Florence on 1 February 1690 into a family of musicians, and was taught by his uncle, the violinist and composer Antonio Veracini, among others. The young Francesco Maria worked in Florence until 1711 when he began to appear in Venice, and in 1714 he travelled north of the Alps for the first time, visiting London and Düsseldorf before eventually settling in Dresden. Veracini worked as a highly paid member of the Italian musical establishment at the Dresden court between 1717 and 1723, when he returned to his home city. Shortly before he left Dresden, on 13 August 1722, he threw himself from an upstairs window. Johann Mattheson claimed that the cause was a fit of madness brought on by excessive musical and alchemical studies, but Veracini suggested in later life that jealous colleagues had conspired to murder him. Be that as it may, Veracini survived and remained in Italy until 1733, when he once more travelled to London. He worked there on and off until 1745 when he returned to Italy for the last time; according to Charles Burney he was shipwrecked in the Channel, and lost his treasured Stainer violins ‘St Peter’ and ‘St Paul’. Veracini’s relatively uneventful last years were taken up with directing the music in two Florentine churches, and with writing a treatise, Il trionfo della practica musicale. He died in Florence on 31 October 1768.