== 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.