Vittoria Aganoor, Italian poet of Armenian descent

Vittoria Aganoor (1855–1910) was an Italian poet of Armenian descent and one of Italy’s most respected writers. She was born in Padua; her father, Edoardo Aganoor, was Armenian, his ancestors having come to Europe from Madras in India, and her mother, Giuseppina Pacini, was Italian. She grew up in the “House of the Armenians” in Padua.

She published her first poems in 1876, illustrated by her sister Elena. Her collection “Leggenda eterna” (Eternal Legend), published in 1900, brought her great fame; Benedetto Croce called them the most beautiful poems ever written by an Italian woman. In 1905 her poems were translated into Armenian, and in 1908 her collection “Nuove liriche” (New Lyrics) appeared. She died in 1910 after an unsuccessful operation; on the same day her husband, the member of parliament Guido Pompilj, took his own life.

The photograph shows a young woman with long curly hair in an oval frame.