Juraj Baraković (Plemići, Rtina near Zadar

Zadar

Zadar is a city in Croatia on the Adriatic Sea. It is the centre of Zadar county and the wider northern Dalmatian region. Population of the city is 75,082 citizens...

, 1548 – Rome

Rome

Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

, August 1, 1628) is a Croatian Renaissance

Renaissance

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...

 poet from Zadar

Zadar

Zadar is a city in Croatia on the Adriatic Sea. It is the centre of Zadar county and the wider northern Dalmatian region. Population of the city is 75,082 citizens...

.

He wrote several distinguished pieces ("Jarula", Venice 1618 - Old and New Testament in storytelled form; "Draga, rapska pastirica"), but one work excels in his literary opus: complicated and the most explicitly manneristic epic in 13 books "Vila slovinka" (Venice, 1613).

Most of Baraković's poetry was dedicated to the glory of Zadar, with firm reliance on his co-citizen Petar Zoranić

Petar Zoranic

Petar Zoranić was a Croatian Renaissance writer from Zadar.He is most important as the author of Planine, the first Croatian novel. Pastoral in nature, the novel shows influence of Virgil, Ovid, Dante Alighieri, Francesco Petrarca and Giovanni Boccaccio. The novel was written in 1538 and published...

 that already left a notable mark on Croatian literature

Croatian literature

Croatian literature is a definition given to the compilation of novels, dramas, short stories, poems and other various work of written kind entirely attributed to the medieval and modern culture of the Croats and the Croatian language....

. "Vila slovinka", an epic written in the glory of Zadar, has two especially notable features: in the eighth book the eleven octosyllabic sonnets are listed, which are, beside a few anonymously written ones in Ranjina's Miscellany, the only sonnets in Croatian poetry before the Illyrian movement

Illyrian movement

The Illyrian movement , also Croatian national revival , was a cultural and political campaign with roots in the early modern period, and revived by a group of young Croatian intellectuals during the first half of 19th century, around the years of 1835–1849...

. The same book contains perfectly stylised bugarščica about Mother Margarita, which astonishes both readers and philologists for centuries, still leaving to be determined whether is it a folk song that Baraković incorporated into his own work following the model of Petar Hektorović

Petar Hektorovic

Petar Hektorović was a Croatian writer.Hektorović was born and died in Stari Grad, Hvar. He was a poet and collector of Hvar's fishermen songs, and an important figure of the Renaissance period in Croatian literature...

, or is it his own song adapted to the stylistical features of the folk poem stanzas, or the folk song enhanced by Baraković's skillful poetical and artistical genius.