Bazzani studied at Bologna's Accademia di Belle Arti then traveled to France, Germany and, eventually, Rome where he settled down in 1861 and began to specialize in genre and landscape subjects as well as set designs for theaters.

[2] Inspired by the rediscovery of Pompeii in 1748, he spent 35 years of his life from approximately 1880 to 1915 documenting the ruins of the ancient city that had been exposed by ongoing excavations with watercolor paintings.

Bazzani experimented with the techniques of architectural relief, an aspect so far little known but of great interest for archaeological research[2] and his attention to detail was prized by scientists working at the site.

He also taught perspective and set design at the Academia di Belle Arti in Rome from 1892 to 1896 with Ludovico Zeit[1] and had prize-winning artist Luigi Savoldi as a pupil.

It included a multimedia application developed by the Italian consortium of universities and research centers known as Cineca that integrated images of Bazzani's watercolors into their appropriate locations in Pompeii's archaeological structures as viewed through Google Earth.