Mariette's Dictionary of Artists
His major ambition was to write a history of engraving and a dictionary of artists. In preparation, he compiled numerous annotations to the Abecedario pittorico (1704) of Pellegrino Antonio Orlandi. His father's notes on artists, accumulated in the course of the art trade, and his own wide experience and correspondence among the cognoscenti, were the basis of these projects, none of which, however, ever came to fruition. Caylus used Mariette's notes on Vasari's Lives for his manuscript Vies d’artistes du XVIIIe siècle.
Fortunately a corpus of Mariette's assembled materials— pamphlets, manuscripts, salon and exhibition catalogues, including the salon criticism of Diderot—came into the hands of Charles-Nicolas Cochin, an artist and guiding spirit of Neoclassicism, and, greatly augmented, was deposited in 1880 at the Bibliothèque Nationale
Not until 1851 were Mariette's notes and anecdotes entered in the Abecedario compiled by Philippe de Chennevières and Anatole de Montaiglon, in the six volumes of Abecedario de P.J. Mariette et autres notes inédites de cet amateur sur les arts et les artistes (Paris, 1851–60).
Mariette's circle of friends was large, broad enough almost to define the state of art connoisseurship in France during his time, beginning with the circle he met at the houses of the prodigious collection Pierre-Antoine Crozat, where besides artists like Antoine Watteau and the classicizing sculptor Edmé Bouchardon, Mariette met the abbé de Maroulle and the comte de Caylus,, who helped sharpen his eye.
Mariette married Angélique-Catherine Doyen in 1724. He acquired a country house at Croissy, which he named "Le Colifichet" was ennobled during the reign of Louis XV, and honored with the Order of the Saint-Esprit.
An exhibition at the Musée du Louvre in 1967 drew together materials to honour his memory, occasioning a rich catalogue and a vita by the editor of The Burlington Magazine; it provoked a resurgence of scholarly interest in the history of taste and the role of other Parisian taste-makers, such as the marchands-merciers, like Edme-François Gersaint.
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