A pen and ink drawing of a female opera singer, standing with her head in profile to the left; with her right hand outstretched to the side, and her left hand raised and pointing upwards; wearing a plumed headdress, a dress with a hooped skirt, and a cloak.

This is a caricature of Faustina Bordoni, a mezzo-soprano who made a sensational debut in the role of the Scottish princess Ginevra in Carlo Francesco Pollarolo's opera Ariodante at the Teatro San Giovanni Grisostomo on 14 November, 1716. During her illustrious career she sang in more than thirty operas in Venice. Bordoni is the subject of four caricatures in the Royal Collection: RCIN 907349-907352. She also appears in Antonio Maria Zanetti's album of caricatures in the Fondazione Cini, Venice: inv. 36426.

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.

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.