To accompany the exhibition 'El Siglo de Oro: The Age of Velázquez', the Kunstbibliothek is showing a selection of portrait prints from the 17th century, focussing on portraits of the Habsburg era in Spain. The prints can be seen in the display cases in the first-floor foyer.

The collection of portrait prints in the Lipperheide Costume Library's Fashion Image Collection was assembled with great dedication by the Berlin publisher and collector Franz von Lipperheide (1838–1906) from the 1880s onwards. According to the surviving inventory books, Lipperheide acquired around 6000 individual portraits from the 16th to the 19th centuries from a specialist art dealer in Nuremberg as early as 1880. As well as single sheets (copperplates, etchings, mezzotints, lithographs and reproductive prints), there are also numerous portraits contained in historical source works. There is also a comprehensive collection of early portrait photographs (in carte de visite and cabinet card format) from the second half of the 19th century. The total portfolio of portraits in the Lipperheide Costume Library's Fashion Image Collection probably amounts to some 20,000 sheets.

Cataloguing this portrait collection has been one of the Lipperheide Costume Library's inventory projects for several years and is not nearly complete. Around 2000 individual sheets (photographs and prints) can so far be accessed via the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin's online database.