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