Alberto III Pio

Alberto III Pío, portrait in the National Gallery (London) attributed to Bernardino Loschi. Alberto III Pio di Savoia (23 July 1475 – 1531), was an Italian Renaissance nobleman and diplomat, joint Lord and later Count of Carpi, between 1477 and 1525. He was commonly known as Alberto Pio da Carpi or simply as Carpi. He cultivated interest in humanism and was an intimate of the Medici popes.

Biography He was born in Carpi, the eldest child of Caterina Pico and , co-ruler of the Lordship of Carpi together with his cousin

His father died when he was two years old, and he and his newborn brother, also named , were raised under the guardianship of their mother and Marco II. They supervised the education of the two children and, reportedly at the suggestion of Caterina's brother, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (albeit at the time little more than a boy) engaged as tutor Aldus Manutius, who was later to found the famed Aldine Press in Venice, which Alberto funded.

Since Lionello I and Marco II had obtained a decree from Emperor Frederick III in 1470 introducing primogeniture in Carpi, Alberto III was his father's sole successor as joint Lord of Carpi. In fact, however, Marco II managed to keep him away from political affairs for a long time (as well as from caring for his allodial estates—his mother having remarried in 1484), initially due to his young age, and later due to his long stay abroad to complete his studies. He was educated first at Ferrara, where he attended lectures by Pietro Pomponazzi and became friends with Pietro Bembo and Ludovico Ariosto, then at Padua.

Alberto III eventually obtained the investiture of joint lordship from Emperor Frederick III and returned to Carpi in 1490. After Marco II's death in 1494, disagreements with his son and successor, , led to the outbreak of a full-blown civil war, followed by the peacemaking intervention of the Duke of Ferrara, Ercole I d'Este. According to the arbitration imposed by him in 1599, Giberto III renounced in his favor his share of the lordship over Carpi and was in exchange invested with the Este fiefdom of Sassuolo; Alberto III instead remained the only Pio to rule Carpi, but had to accept the dangerous Este neighbour as joint Lord. The latter was Alberto's fate, for after the papal alliance with Francis was made public, Charles was reported to have become enraged. Shortly thereafter on 24 February 1525 Charles' troops defeated and captured Francis at the Battle of Pavia, and eight days later his troops occupied Carpi under the command of the Marquis of Pescara, Fernando d'Ávalos, who had personal ambitions for the county despite the promises Charles V had made to the now deceased Prospero Colonna. Alberto was deposed for "felony," that is, for breaching the oath of fealty that bound him to the Emperor, and his fief was consequently confiscated.