Recto: a pen and ink drawing of Antonio Francesco Carli: standing in profile to the left with his right hand raised and his left hand on his hip; wearing a plumed cap, a lorica-like tunic with tasses, a cloak and a scimitar. Verso: Nicola Grimaldi: standing in profile to the left with his left hand outstretched and his right hand to his breast; wearing a full-bottom wig and a wide-skirted tunic. Inscribed, lower right corner: J S.

Antonio Francesco Carli was a bass, appearing in Venice almost continually between 1706 and 1723 at the Teatro San Giovanni Grisostomo and at the Teatro San Angelo. In this drawing he is probably represented as Colombo in Francesco Gasparini's Il più fedel fra i vassalli, or as Artabano in Michelangelo Gasparini's Arsace, or Arbate in Giovanni Maria Cappelli's Mitridate Ré di Ponto. Nicola Grimaldi is the subject of six other caricatures in the Royal Collection; RCIN 907284-907290.

This 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. There is a version of this drawing (recto) in the Algarotti-Gellman Album of eighteenth-century Venetian operatic caricatures: Croft-Murray no. 8. See also Anton Maria Zanetti's album of caricatures in the Fondazione Cini, Venice: inv. 36419.

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.