As an editorial director of Feltrinelli Bassani was responsible for the posthumous publication in 1958 of Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa's Il Gattopardo, a novel which had been rejected by Elio Vittorini at Mondadori, and Einaudi.
Therefore he met Luchino Visconti and also Piero Tosi, who was also a costume designer and worked several times with Visconti, specially in the films Il Gattopardo and Death in Venice for which he was nominated to the Academy Awards.