She specialised in delicately carving out areas of paper to make flat, two-dimensional pieces. She used this method to create her beautiful compositions. They included biblical and historical scenes, still lifes, landscapes, city views and allegories, as well as portraits of royal figures and other prominent contemporaries. Her name quickly spread far beyond the borders of the Dutch Republic. Even Tsar Peter the Great, who stayed in Amsterdam in 1697, visited Koerten’s collection housed on Nieuwe Dijk to admire her paper art. Even when Koerten was alive it would have cost a fortune to buy a piece by the artist, but today her work is exceptionally rare because so few of these fragile paper artworks have survived.
Getting started with the collection: