Especially in Northern Europe, small groups of soldiers became a popular subject for paintings and especially prints by many artists, including Urs Graf, who is unusual in that he was a professional Swiss mercenary for many years. These works began to present a less heroic view of soldiers, who often represented a considerable threat to civilian populations even in peacetime, though the extravagant costumes of the Landsknecht are often treated as glamorous. For Peter Paret, from the Renaissance "the glorification of the temporal leader and of his political system - which had of course also been present in medieval art - replaces the Christian faith as a determining interpretive force" in military art.