A pen and ink drawing of a female opera singer performing as a general of classical antiquity: standing and leaning back; with her head turned in profile to the left, with her right hand outstretched and pointing upwards; wearing an extravagantly plumed helmet, a full-bottom wig, a wide-skirted tunic, a sword and a cloak.

This is a caricature of the Italian contralto Diana Vico, perhaps in the role of the Roman Quintus Fabius in Lucio Papiro dittatore, performed in 1720 at the Teatro San Giovanni Grisostomo. Known for playing masculine roles en travesti, Vico first performed in her native Venice in Girolamo Polani’s Vindice la pazzia della vendetta, in 1707, and subsequently appeared there in sixteen operas, the last of which was Nicola Antonio Porpora’s Meride e Selinunte. She was in the service of the Elector of Bavaria from 1720. 

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. Diana Vico is the subject of a drawing in Zanetti's album of caricatures: inv. 36550.

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.