Avdotia Istomina
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Avdotia Ilyinichna Istomina (Russian: Евдокия Ильинична Истомина; 1799–1848) was the most celebrated Russian ballerina of the 19th century. A pupil of Charles Didelot, she debuted in the Imperial Ballet in 1815 to immediate acclaim. Several people were killed duelling for her heart, and her honour was defended in the fourfold duel (1817): Count Zavadovsky killed Count Sheremetev, while the Decembrist Yakubovich shot through a palm of the playwright Alexander Griboedov. Her dancing is the subject of a brilliant stanza in Eugene Onegin, which was described by Vladimir Nabokov as the most mellifluous lines in the whole of Russian poetry.
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