Operatic tenor Enrico Caruso achieved international fame in the early 20th century, thanks to the gramophone. Though he appeared at opera houses throughout Europe and the Americas, making more than 800 performances in New York, it was his recordings that won him a mass audience. His version of the aria 'Vesti la giubba' ('On with the motley') from Leoncavello’s opera Pagliacci, made in 1902, was the first record to sell over a million copies.

Caruso was also known as a caricaturist. He regularly contributed sketches to an Italian-American newspaper La Follia di New York, from which a book of drawings was produced in 1908. In 1909 he made a caricature self portrait bust, representing himself as a ‘laughing Buddha’. The photograph shows him holding his original clay model for the sculpture, which was cast in bronze by the Roman Bronze Works of New York. Only eight were produced. The photograph and one of the busts were held in the collection of opera-lover Anthony Gasson and were both acquired by the V&A.