He was already a student at the Young Italy of Giuseppe Mazzini and, in 1848, at the outbreak of the first war of independence he enlisted in the Piedmontese army.

He was involved in the facts of the Mazzinian conspiracy of Mantua in 1852, arrested in his villa in Canicossa di Marcaria on the night of 16 June 1852, he was one of the few who never confessed and thus escaped the death penalty, but was condemned by of the Austrian military judiciary at 18 years of hard prison, then condoned in 1856 .

Released on 2 December 1856, he was one of the main accusers of Luigi Castellazzo which always pointed out as the traitor of the conspirators from Mantua, called the Martyrs of Belfiore.

[2] In 1859 the Piedmontese government appointed him extraordinary commissioner for the province of Mantua, from which he was dismissed by the Minister of the Interior, Urban Rattazzi, on 2 October 1859 for violating the agreements signed with the armistice of Villafranca di Verona.

On 7 June 1886, King Umberto I finally nominated Finzi as a senator, on the proposal of Augustine Depretis, but before he had been sworn into office he died at his house in Canicossa.