The Black Death left an evident sense of misery and sadness in its wake. This sadness was expressed in a variety of cultural and creative forms. During that period, creative expression mirrored people's personal experiences with death. The disease began swiftly decimating Europe's population, with no apparent cause. People started believing that death from the plague was the consequence of God's punishment and foreshadowed an eternity of misery since it was a time of intense religious belief and superstition. The Black Death firmly established realism in the arts. Most artworks of the period attempted to depict the triumph of death over their naïve victims, but in some cases also the bold defiance of people's pride.