Recto: a pen and ink drawing of a male singer: standing, with his head in profile to the left and his right hand raised; represented with a large head and a small body; wearing a plumed cap, a curling wig, a wide-skirted tunic and a cloak. Verso: a male singer in the role of a Roman emperor or general: half length, with his head in profile to the left; wearing a laurel-crowned full-bottom wig, a lorica and a cloak. Inscribed, lower right corner: J S.

This is a caricature (recto) of either Giovanni Battista Pinacci (Pinazzi), or 'Saluatici tenor da Genoua'. Pinacci appeared in Venice at the Teatro San Giovanni Grisostomo, 1723-4 and in the 1740s. If correctly identified, he is here perhaps represented as Danao in Geminiano Giacomelli's Ipermestra. 'Saluatici tenor da Genoua' is perhaps identifiable as Michel Selvatici who appeared in Venice, always at the Teatro San Angelo, in 1721-2 and 1725-6. In this drawing he may be represented as Orimondo in Antonio Vivaldi's L'inganno trionfante in amore, or as Arsace in the same composer's Cunegonde.

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: Croft-Murray no. 27. This singer is also the subject of a drawing in Zanetti's album of caricatures in the Fondazione Cini: inv. 36516. 

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.