A pen and ink drawing of a stout elderly man viewed from behind wearing a tricorne hat, full-bottom wig, long-skirted coat and sword.

This drawing shows the artist's uncle, Sebastiano Ricci (1659-1734), considered in the eighteenth century to be one of Venice's finest history painters and working in the tradition of Paolo Veronese. A caricature in the Algarotti album (see below) is a copy or tracing and is inscribed Seb. Rizzi. Another version with some alterations is in the Zanetti album in the Fondazione Cini. A further caricature by Pierleone Ghezzi in the Vatican Library is inscribed as Bastian Ricci Pittor Veneziano [...].Ghezzi must have known Marco Ricci's caricature or a copy after it. Sebastiano Ricci is also the subject of another caricature in the Royal Collection: RCIN 907223.

The drawing belongs to an album of operatic caricatures mainly by Marco Ricci and Anton Maria Zanetti the Elder, an intact album from the library of Joseph Smith. Zanetti and another Venetian collector, Francesco Algarotti, owned similar albums, with many of the caricatures copied or traced, with identifying inscriptions. Zanetti's album is now in the Fondazione Giorgio Cini, Venice, and Algarotti's belongs to Albert Gellman and is in the Israel Museum, Jerusalem.

Opera was an important part of Venetian society and culture, and such caricatures were circulated among friends and collectors for light-hearted amusement. Joseph Smith was a keen opera lover who was married to the English opera singer Catherine Tofts and kept a box at the Teatro San Grisostomo in Venice. He collected operatic caricatures of the singers and performers of the day as well as artists and other well-known characters by Marco Ricci and others, and had them bound into this album. The drawings were shared and circulated among the three collectors and their circle as light-hearted amusement, but the artistic caricature was also a long established practice in Italian art.