Born in Valetta, Malta on 02.12.1816 as wealthy European aristocrat, descendant of the family of the King of Sicily. Educated in law and drawing, he decided to follow his passion for painting and abandon the lawyer career. He first got an art education from Giuseppe Hyzler, and later studied art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Paris. This was a time when European painters were flocking to Istanbul – the Gateway to the East, and under this influence Preziosi departed in 1842 via Italy toward Istanbul. Despite his father’s entreaties, Preziosi refused to return to Malta, where the other members of his family followed ‘respectable’ careers as doctors, merchants and lawyers. He remained loyal to the passion of his life: Istanbul and painting. His mother tongue was Italian, but Preziosi spoke French, Greek, English and Turkish. He married an Istanbul Greek woman and had four children. He lived in Istanbul for many years, where he became a court painter of Sultan Abdul Hamid II. In 1882, at the age of 65, he accidentally dropped his rifle at a hunt, and got deadly injured. Preziosi’s paintings were exhibited in Paris and London in 1858, 1863 and 1867.
Preziosi visited Macedonia region around 1850, where he made several watercolors and drawings of Albanian. Greek and Bulgarian people in their traditional clothes and daily lives. Some of these drawings were sold by the auction house Bonham’s, London UK on 10.05. 2005.
