Cvijeta Zuzorić

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200px Cvijeta_Zuzoric

Cvijeta Zuzorić or Flora Zuzori (sometimes Floria Zuzzeri) (1555 - 1648) was a lyric poetess and beauty from the Republic of Ragusa (today's Dubrovnik). She wrote in Italian and Croatian.

She was born in Ragusa into a prominent merchant family. Brought up in Italy, she married in 1567, a Florentine nobleman, Bartolomeo Pescioni who had been Florentine consul in Ragusa: the couple moved to Italy in 1582. Being a well educated woman, she invited numerous authors and artists to her house, which was home to a widely known literary academy. Zuzori was, an exceptionally beautiful and intelligent woman, was said to have written excellent epigrams and gentle rhymes, which, however, have not survived. She is known only by reputation, since she was mentioned and celebrated in countless poems by Dinko Zlataric, Miho Bunic-Babulinov, Miho Monaldi, Boccabinco, Simonetti, Marin Battitera, her contemporaries, as well as later Ragusean authors.

It is interesting to note that she was also mentioned in the sonnets of the great Italian poet Torquato Tasso, who praised her virtues and beauty even though he had never met her. Her great friend Nicolò Vito di Gozze and his wife Maria Gondola Gozze described her physical and spiritual beauty in his famous philosophical work on love, of a treatise on the Meteors of Aristotle.