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That first year in London he produced one hundred twenty portraits, besides painting various other pictures. This he could not have done without the assistance of a most loyal helper.

This helper was Giuseppe Marchi.

There are a half-dozen biographies of Reynolds, and from Boswell, Walpole and Burney, Gossips-in-Ordinary, we have vivid glimpses into his life and habits. Then we have his own journal, and hundreds of letters; but nowhere do we get a frank statement of the assistance rendered him by Giuseppe Marchi.

When Reynolds was in Rome, aged twenty-one, he fell in with a tatterdemalion, who proffered his service as guide. Rome is full of such specimens, and the type is one that has not changed in five hundred years.

Reynolds tossed the lad a copper, and the ragged one showed his fine white teeth in a gladsome grin and proffered information. He clung to the visitor all that afternoon, and the next morning when Reynolds started out with his sketching-outfit, the youngster was sitting on his doorstep. So they fared forth, Giuseppe carrying the kit.

Reynolds knew but little Italian–the boy taught him more. The boy knew every corner of Rome, and was deep in the history of the Eternal City–all he knew was Rome.

Joshua taught the youngster to sketch, and after the first few days there in Rome. Joshua rigged Giuseppe up an easel, and where went Joshua there also went Giuseppe.

Joshua got a bit ashamed of his partner’s attire and bought him better raiment.

When Reynolds left Rome on his homeward march, there, too, tagged the faithful Giuseppe.

After several months they reached Lyons, and Joshua counted his money. There was only enough to pay his fare by the diligence to Paris, with a few francs over for food. He told Giuseppe that he could not take him farther, and emptying his pockets of all his coppers, and giving him his best silk handkerchief and a sketching-outfit, they cried down each other’s backs, kissed each other on both cheeks in the Italian fashion, and parted.

It took eight days to reach Paris by the diligence, and Joshua only got through by stopping one day and bartering a picture for sundry loaves of necessary bread.

But he had friends in Paris, influential friends. And when he reached the home of these influential friends, there on the curbstone sat Giuseppe, awaiting his coming, with the silk handkerchief knotted loosely about his neck!

Giuseppe had thrown away the painting-kit and walked the three hundred miles in eight days, begging or stealing by the way the food he needed.

When Joshua Reynolds opened his studio in Saint Martin’s Lane, his faithful helper was Giuseppe Marchi. Giuseppe painted just as Joshua did, and just as well.

When sitters came, Giuseppe was only a valet: he cleaned the brushes, polished the knives, ran for water and hovered near to do his master’s bidding. He was the only person allowed in the model-room, and all the time he was there his keen eyes made a correct and proper estimate of the sitter. Listening to no conversation, seeing nothing, he yet heard everything and nothing escaped his glance.

When the sitting, which occupied an hour, was over, Giuseppe took the picture into another room, and filled in the background and drapery just as he knew it should be.

“Marchi does not sign and date the portraits, but he does all the rest,” said Garrick. And “Little Burney,” treading on thinner ice, once remarked, “If Sir Joshua ever embraces a fair sitter and imprints upon her forehead a chaste kiss, I am sure that Giuseppe Marchi will never tell.”

It is too late to accuse Sir Joshua Reynolds of ingratitude towards Giuseppe; he was grateful, and once referred to Marchi as “an angel sent from God to help me do my work.” But he paid Marchi valet’s wages and treated him like a servant. Possibly this was the part of expedience, for had Marchi ever gotten it into his head that he could paint as well as Sir Joshua he would have been worthless as a helper.