Parker, Mark
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- Parker, Mark
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(c.1698 - 1775), antiquary; b. Florence; m. Marie-Madeleine Sarner; d. Paris.
c.1698 - 1749 Florence, Rome 1724(?) - 49
Mark Parker spent most of his life in Italy. Robert Adam said that '[Parker's] father, having been sent Intendant to Florence, married a German woman there. He dying and she being a Catholic, educated [Mark Parker] in those principles. He entered the service of the Pope, was captain of his galleys'.1 He married in Rome Marie-Madeleine Sarner (1707 - after 1771), and their daughter, Virginia Cecilia (b. Rome 1728), married the French painter Joseph Vernet in Rome in 1745. Parker was described as English in his daughter's marriage contract (and it was said that Captain Parker had allowed Vernet to witness a storm at sea in 1744).2
Parker was living in the Strada Vittoria in 1727 ('Marco Parcher') but had left the apartment in 1728;3 Joseph Spence met him in Rome in 1732 and 1740 - 1,4 Martin Folkes met 'Mr Parker the Antiquary who lives here [in Rome]' in November 1733,5 and Lady Grisell Baillie, who described him as a good antiquary and 'cousen to Mr Parker the Beedle at Oxford', also met him in Rome between 1731 and 1733.6 Horace Mann called him 'a noted antiquarian',7 and although he was sometimes exasperated by his manner,8 acknowledged that Parker often had good things; his purchases from Cardinal Cibo, for example, were 'much talked of, and are of good names'.9 Between 1738 and 1745 Parker obtained eleven export licences, principally for statuary and reliefs, but including some unspecified pictures.(10) After his daughter's marriage to Vernet it appears he also acted as an agent for English patrons of his son-in-law's work.
In 1741 Lady Mary Wortley Montagu mentioned 'an English Antiquarian' in Rome whom she believed was a government (i.e., a Hanoverian) spy,11 and in 1744 Cardinal Albani told Mann that Parker whose 'profession est de faire L'Antiquaire, et ce sont la tous les revenus qu'il a pour se tenir a Rome,' was being discredited by the Jacobites. In 1749 Parker was quietly ordered out of Rome by the Inquisition, apparently as a result of some confessions made in 1749 at one of Jack St Leger's wild dinner parties. Whatever the evidence of impiety, it was serious enough for Albani to accept that nothing could be done.(12) James Russel's father wrote on 18 October 1749 that Parker 'was banished Rome, and shut up in a monastery for life'.(13) Russel said Parker had retired to a convent at Siena and become 'exceedingly godly and penitent'.14 On 6 June 1752 Russel wrote that Vernet, Parker's son-in-law, was on his way to Siena15 and it would appear that shortly afterwards Parker left Italy with Vernet.
Vernet allegedly included the figure of Parker with his family in the foreground of his Port of Marseilles painted in 1754 (Louvre) and in December that year Robert Adam met in Toulon, 'an old Englishman called Parker', with his daughter and son-in-law, Joseph Vernet.16 In October 1765 Parker, then settled in Paris, told Henry Hoare that he lived with his son-in-law 'as I have done ever sience I was oblidged to leave Rome, by an order from the Inquisition'.17
1. Fleming, Adam, 120. 2. Lagrange, 36. F. Ingersoll-Smouse, Joseph Vernet, 1:17, doubts the story. 3. AVR sa, S.Lorenzo in Lucina 1727. 4. Spence Letters, 419, 420. 5. Folkes jnl.MSS (1 Nov.). 6. Baillie, Household Bk., 392. 7. SP 98/44, f.436 (24 Jun. 1742). Wal.Corr., 17:82n30. See also Pomfret Corr., 3:23. 8. Wal.Corr., 18:161. 9. Ibid., 273. 10. Bertolotti, 4:79 - 80. 11. Montagu Letters, 2:234. 12. See Lewis 1961, 120, 146 - 7. SP 105/283, f.247 (Albani, 1 Aug. 1744). 13. Add.41169, f.37v. 14. Devon CRO, Quick MSS, 64/12/21/1/135 (J. Russel, 17 Sep. 1749). 15. Wicklow MSS. 16. Fleming, Adam, 120. 17. Ingersoll-Smouse (at n2), 1:f.p.20.