Career
As a Guelph he played an important role in wider Lombard politics and as a troubadour in the Occitan language he composed three poems descriptive of his times. Luchetto"s first diplomatic activity occurred in 1266, when he acted as an ambassador from Genoa to Pope Clement IV and Charles of Anjou. In 1270 he was assigned by the Angevins to "examine" the government of the podestà Orlando Putagio in Parma.
His first major political assignment is related in the Chronicon of Pietro Cantinelli under the year 1272: Dominus Luchittus de Cataluxiis de Janua fuit potestas Bononiae ("Lord Luchetto Gattilusio of Genoa made podestà of Bologna").
Luchetto was still acting as Guelph podestà of Bologna on 6 March 1277, when Enzo of Sardinia, son of the Emperor Frederick II and long languishing in a Bolognese prison, dictated his testament in the presence of nobili viro Luchitto de Gatalusiis cive januensi Bonon. Praetore ("nobleman Luchetto Gattilusio, citizen of Genoa, praetor of Bologna," praetor being synonymous with podestà at that time).
The next year (1273), however, he was also capitano del popolo of Lucca under Charles. He was still at Lucca in 1277.
In 1282 Luchetto served a term as podestà of Milan.
In 1295 he again acted as Genoese ambassador to the pope, this time Boniface VIII, and helped seal a peace with Venice. On that mission he also received a papal bull for a church he had built at Priano in Sestri Ponente. His last position of state was in Cremona, where he served as podestà in 1301.
He appears in documents for the last time in 1307.
Through his long and varied career Luchetto had acquired interests in property in Sardinia, and he appeared in documents of Nino Visconti, Judge of Gallura, and Ugolino della Gherardesca, capitano del popolo of Pisa. His literary interests may have taken him into contact with Brunetto Latini.
Economically he exercised power over the market in Bologna for many years. He is not to be confused, however, with another podestà of the same name who ruled in Savona in 1301.
