A pen an ink drawing of a female opera singer, absurdly squat, standing to front and holding a fan in her right hand: wearing plumes in her hair, and a wide, richly embroidered hooped skirt. Inscribed, upper right corner, by Joseph Smith: La Turcotti L'anno 1742.

This is a caricature of Maria Giustina Turcotti, represented late in her career as Irene in a performance of Andrea Bernasconi's Bajazet at the Teatro San Giovanni Grisostomo, October 1742.  In a scathing review of the evening's proceedings, the artist's brother, Girolamo Zanetti observed that Turcotti 'sang very well but was fat to the point of deformity'.

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 in Antonio Maria Zanetti's album of caricatures in the Fondazione Cini: inv. 36742. Turcotti is also represented, at an earlier stage in her career, in RCIN 907357 and 907358.

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.