His uncle, Alberto Pio da Carpi, had been educated by Pico della Mirandola, and had become a noted humanist scholar.

Others besides Cardinal Carpi made careers in diplomacy: Alberto Pio (1475–1531) who was Imperial ambassador in Rome[2] won fame as a man of learning.

Pope Leo X granted him the church of the Holy Trinity in Ferrara, clearly as a favor to his uncle rather than an acknowledgment of his own achievements.

[4] Rodolfo was sent to study at the University of Padua, where he became Doctor of Philosophy,[5] and at Rome, where he took up an ecclesiastical career as a Papal Chamberlain under Pope Clement VII, who made him bishop of Faenza in 1528.

[7] He was back in France as a special envoy in the summer of 1533, charged with arranging a personal meeting between Francis I and Pope Clement VII.

The pope wanted to meet at Nice, but eventually the meeting took place in Marseille, where the marriage of Henry II and Catherine de' Medici was solemnized, and where Pope Clement was able to engage in negotiations with both Francis I and Charles V.[8] Carpi attracted further notice in papal diplomacy when he was established as papal nuncio at the court of Francis I (1535–1537).

[9] There he negotiated a peace between King Francis and the Emperor Charles V, who was pleased enough to appoint him "protector of the Holy Roman Empire".

Carpi was advised about these rumors by Pope Paul's secretary, Ambrogio Ricalcato, who also indicated that they were being circulated by agents of the Cardinal de Lorraine.

Carpi's work, into which he drew the assistance of fourteen experts, was finally given approval and authorization by Pope Paul III in September 1544.

[22] In 1544, the Cardinal presided over the establishment of the Accademia degli Imperfetti in Meldola, the tiny principality of which his uncle Alberto Pio da Carpi had been the first ruler.

[26] Pope Julius III (Ciocchi del Monte) promoted ('preferred') Cardinal Carpi to the See of Frascati (Tusculum) on 11 December 1553.

[28] Pio da Carpi was the favorite candidate of King Philip II of Spain in the Conclave of 5 September–26 December 1559, which followed the death of Pope Paul IV, along with Jacopo Puteo (President of the Inquisition in Rome), Giovanni Angelo de' Medici (brother of the Marchese di Marignano), and Clemente D'Olera (former head of the Observant Franciscans).

The intractable resistance of the leader of the French faction, cardinal Ippolito d'Este, however, prevented his being considered a serious candidate for the papacy.

[31] Carpi's broader modern interest for historians centers on his collection of classical sculpture and other antiquities, which formed one of the prominent museums of Rome.

And his Greek and Latin library, dispersed after his death, brought scholars and humanists, not invariably good Catholics, to his palazzo in the Campo Marzio, the Campus Martius of Antiquity.

He had long suffered from gout (podagra), by which he was so tormented in the last four months of his life that he could not eat, speak or sleep without great pain.

[34] He is interred in Rome at Santissima Trinità dei Monti, above the Spanish Steps, where there is a sepulchral monument erected to his memory by Pope Pius V in 1568.