He was born in Milan in 1839. There is very little biographical information on his youth. However, he participated together with his uncle Angelo Trezzini (Domenico Induno's brother-in-law) in the 1859 campaign. He also frequented Brera from 1853 to 1858. In 1966 he took root in Davesco from where he rarely moved and this was perhaps a limit for his painting of him. However, he participated in Italian exhibitions (for example in Asti, at the Industrial Art Exhibition where he received a medal in 1869, in Milan in 1872 and in 1881, in Turin in 1880 with Davesco's View and in 1884 with October). In 1975 he received the Mylius award. He was a painter almost exclusively of landscapes ("monogamous painter almost without infidelity", Adriano Soldini); he always had to deal with economic problems, he sold, indeed he sold off, his canvases to German tourists. Sometimes he composed portraits, much more rarely did he deal with genre painting (The lesson, with the Capuchin friar teaching, in a kitchen interior, to two little girls). His landscapes are almost always precise views, captured in open air, of Lake Lugano seen from Davesco, Cureggia, Paradiso. He was, in the words of Martinola, a "mountain" and "lake" painter. The Preda, while painting from life, never expires in a trite realism or even, despite the repetition of the subject, in boredom. His paintings are populated by figures: peasant women with panniers, washerwomen (where perhaps some echo of Mosè Bianchi can be traced), or "good" ladies with an umbrella open to shelter from the sun. Sometimes he goes to Campione (Madonna dei Ghirli) or on Lake Maggiore, in the Engadine, in Liguria, but never on Lake Como. He probably did not even go to Holland, although there are some canvases by him depicting Dutch mills and landscapes, perhaps executed directly from his photographs. Other times in his landscapes he inserts animals, cows, goats (Vacche all'abbeveratoio), donkeys (Seven donkeys at the fountain, palizziano in the rendering of the fur). He was linked by deep friendship with another Ticino citizen, Luigi Monteverde, who, one summer of 1888, rented a roccolo on Monte Boglia, hosting his friend Preda (so he will speak in an interview that appeared in the newspaper "Genevois" in 1894: "Nous vécûmes toujours dans la plus parfaite harmonie: la peinture ne nous divisa jamais").