A pen and ink drawing of a female opera singer, standing with her head turned in profile to the left: with her left hand pointing and her right hand holding a fan; wearing an aigrette in her hair and a wide hooped skirt.

This is a caricature, probably of Giustina Gallo (or Galli) in the role of either Tamiri or Adelaide in the operas Farnace and Ottone, both given at the Teatro San Giovanni Grisostomo, Venice, in 1739. In these operas the dances were choreographed by Francois Sauveterre, who is represented in RCIN 907409. Gallo made her debut at the same theatre in the role of the Phrygian princess Creusa in a staging of Demofoonte in December 1734.

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. A closely related drawing is in Antonio Maria Zanetti's album of caricatures in the Fondazione Cini, Venice: inv. 36733.

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.