Naghash Hovnatan (Armenian: Նաղաշ Հովնաթան; 1661, Shorot, Nakhijevan, Safavid Iran – 1722, Shorot) was an Armenian poet, ashugh, painter, and founder of the Hovnatanian artistic family.

[1] Hovnatan was born to a priestly family in Nakhijevan (at the time part of the Erivan Province in the Safavid Empire) in the village of Shorot.

Hovnatan spent most of his life in Tbilisi and Yerevan and is considered one of the most prominent representatives of late medieval secular Armenian poetry, his work is closest to the work of ashughs.

[2] Hovnatan authored more than a hundred satirical, romantic, drinking, and edifying or admonitory songs and odes.

[1] As a painter, Hovnatan undertook the interior decoration of the Etchmiadzin Cathedral in 1712, which was completed by 1721.