The Dutch Golden Age was women’s work, too

Johanna Koerten was a multifaceted artist in a wide range of media, including glass, silk, wax and watercolor. But she is most famous for her paper cuts, works that use small cuts and incisions in paper to create images as richly illusionistic as a woodcut or engraving. Paper is fragile and only about 15 of Koerten’s works survive, but the National Museum of Women in the Arts is showing three of her cuttings, including a 1697 allegorical representation of Roman Freedom surrounded by delicate profile portraits of key figures from the early Roman Empire.