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 == Ambition == 

 ""Ambition"" is not a defining factor of what is or isn't ""history painting"". While later history paintings often tend to go for the large-scale mass-scenes, adding ""ambition"" to the definition of the genre excludes way too many works, especially many of the older religious and allegorical works which are clearly included in the genre. A work like File:Cimabue - Flagellation.jpg fits perfectly in the definition of ""history painting"", but can hardly be called ambitious (or certainly not more ambitious than portraits, landscapes, genre paintings, ...). I have therefor excluded it again from the introduction of the article.   "