Bassani, the late Italian - Jewish author (novelist, essayist, poet and editor), is best known for The Garden of the Finzi Continis, first published in 1962. The late Italian movie director Vittorio de Sica’s celebrated film (based on the book) was released in 1971.
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Bassani was born in Bologna, Italy in 1916. He was raised in Ferrra; he died in Rome, 2000. He is buried in the Jewish cemetery in Ferrara, the town where his writings take place.
 
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Bibliography: Published on the cover of The Drama of the Assimilated Jew – Giorgio Bassani’s Romanzo di Ferrara. Author: Lucienne Kroha. Pub. by the University of Toronto Press, 2014

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ABOUT THE DRAWING:
I titled the work Giorgio Bassani and 3 Ferrara scenes, but it actually depicts, aside from the portrait, 4 scenes of Ferrara.

The imagery, lower left: The entry door of the Jewish school on via Vignatagliata where Bassani taught after race laws of 1939 prevented him from teaching in state schools. My interpretative portrayal of this was inspired by a photo in the late academic and writer Marilyn Schneider’s book, Vengeance of the Victim: History and Symbol in Georgio Bassani's Fiction (pub. by the University of Minnesota press, 1986).

The imagery, bottom center: The padlocked metal gate of the Finzi-Contini estate, seen at the very end of the Vittorio de Sica film.

The imagery, upper right: The view of the front of the estate as seen from inside the window of the car carrying Nicole after her arrest, as seen in the film.

The imagery, lower right: The Corso Roma, now called the Corso Martiri della Liberta, in Ferrara. At left is the wall [the top of which, in my drawing, is below Bassani’s necktie] of the Este Castle, where a Fascist operation - massacre of anti-Fascists and civilians took place in 1943. This shows the view of the Este Castle wall and some of the castle itself (seen at left of the cobblestones); the wall faced the scene of the massacre; at right: shops including a pharmacy.
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ABOUT BASSANI and FERRARA:
Bassani books available in English translation include “Five Stories of Ferrara” (1971, winner of the prestigious Strega Prize); “Gold Rimmed Spectacles” (1960); “The Heron (1970); Behind the Door (1972); a story collection: “The Smell of Hay” (1975); Rolls Royce and other Poems” (1982); and “Italian  Stories” (1989).
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During World Wari II ninety-six of Ferrara’s 300 Jews were deported to Nazi concentration-death camps and mass-murder extermination camps; five survived.

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In 1940 his first book of short stories, Una città di pianura (A City of the Plain) was published under the pseudonym Giacomo Marchi, which he used because of the Fascist government’s anti-Jewish racial laws. 

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While a member of the anti-Fascist resistance, he was arrested in early 1943, and imprisoned until July, when the regime fell.