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On the ground floor of the museum you’ll find a 17th-century hand press and one of Europe’s finest collections of 1,584 intricate boxwood engravings. On the walls are prints executed on the press, which is still in working order.

Also on the ground floor is a room dedicated to an indefatigable chronicler of Mediterranean life, whose passion was Mallorcan culture. His nine volumes on the Balearics are the most exhaustive study ever made of the archipelago.

Mallorca’s mountainous Tramuntana region has long attracted landscape painters. Among the outstanding Mallorcan artists shown here are Joan Fuster, Bartomeu Ferrà and Antoni Ribas.

Works by Santiago Rusiñol and Sebastià Junyer, and the more Impressionistic Eliseo Meifrén are displayed.

These include the illustrious American Impressionist John Singer Sargent and contemporary Italian master Aligi Sassu, whose works owe much to Futurism, Surrealism and Expressionism.

The contemporary collection was conceived as a spotlight on Juli Ramis (1909–90), one of the most important Mallorcan painters of the 20th century. Works include his signature Dama Blava and those of his Paris contemporaries, showing a cross-fertilization of influences.

Of note is El Vol de l’Alosa – Miró’s whimsical illustrations for the works of Mallorcan poets.

On one wall in the last room is The Burial of Count Orgaz – a series of 10 engravings by Picasso, dating from 1966. The themes here are strongly sexual, as in many of the great artist’s works.

Also in the last room are a few works by the other great Catalan painter, Antoni Tàpies. Master of an elegant Abstract Expressionism all his own, his work has little in common with the more Surrealistic images of his compatriots Miró and Dalí, being more understated, poetic and monumental.

Finally, there are some small but significant engravings and lithographs by modern international artists, including German Surrealist Max Ernst, Italian Futurist Robert Matta, the great Alberto Giacometti, French Dadaist André Masson and the English masters Henry Moore and Francis Bacon.