Aron Ettore Schmitz (December 19, 1861 – September 13, 1928), with the pseudonym Italo Svevo, was a model for Leopold Bloom, the protagonist of James Joyce's Ulysses. He was born in Trieste to a Jewish family. Joyce had met Schmitz in 1907, when Joyce tutored him in English while working for Berlitz in Trieste.

Svevo wrote the classic novel La Coscienza di Zeno which was self-published in 1923. The work, showing the author's interest in the theories of Sigmund Freud, is written in the form of the memoirs of one Zeno Cosini, who writes them at the insistence of his psychoanalyst. The work might have disappeared altogether if it were not for the efforts of James Joyce. Joyce championed Confessions of Zeno, helping to have it translated into French and then published in Paris, where critics praised it.

J.M.Coetzee in his book Inner Workings includes a literary essay on Italo Svevo. The essay is biographical with emphasis on Svevo as an author. Schopenhauer influenced Svevo; Coetzee says, "In Svevo's eyes, Schopenhauer was the first philosopher to treat those afflicted with the handicap of reflective thought as a separate species, coexisting warily with healthy, unreflective types" (4). Svevo's focus on "reflective thought" coupled with the psychoanalytic themes of his books give insight into the reason Joyce used Svevo as a model for Bloom.

Alfred Hunter, also a model for Bloom, will be discussed separately.