The painting entered the Museum as an original work by Herman van Swanevelt. This attribution is maintained in later catalogues and accepted by all authors. In early Museum catalogues the work is described as the companion piece to Landscape with Fisherman Family at Dusk (P2141).

In the latest general inventory of paintings (1990) this work is listed as Landscape with Saint Paul preaching. However Capitelli (2005) proposes that the preacher be identified as Saint Sebald, an anchorite from Nuremberg included in Oraculum anachoreticum, a series of engravings after drawings by Marten de Vos that was devoted to Clement VIII Aldobrandini and published in Antwerp and Venice in 1600 by Jan and Raphael Sadeler. In the opinion of this author, Van Swanevelt would have drawn inspiration from the same series for the no longer extant Landscape with Orchard and Saint Fiacre of Meaux at Prayer, of which only a preliminary drawing survives.

Light enters from the left, illuminating the group of listeners located on the right beneath the luxuriant grove of trees and casting a shadow over the left hand side, where the monk stands with his back to the viewer, beside a withered tree. A warm light envelops the background, where a fortress and various buildings emerge from among the leafy vegetation. The horizon is enclosed by mountains. As Steland points out (forthcoming), the compositional scheme is derived from the scenes of the preachings of Saint John the Baptist. The treatment of the leaves and trunks of the trees is characteristic of Van Swanevelt.

The X-radiograph reveals a prominent outline of light around the background mountains. It is very similar to that found in the X-rays of Jan Both`s vertical landscapes, especially Taking the Cattle out (P2061), which makes it reasonable to think that Both was involved in the present work. The figures are not superimposed over the scenery as in the horizontal landscapes; rather, space was set aside for them. Luna (1984) and Barghahn (1986) do not consider them to be originals by Van Swanevelt. However, Steland correctly attributes them to the painter and connects them with some of the figures dotting the landscapes executed by Van Swanevelt during his last years in Rome, such as Birth of Adonis and Abduction of Adonis (Rome, Galleria Doria Pamphilj). But what is more, the type, groupings, poses and clothing of these figures allow this landscape to be related to biblical scenes painted by Van Swanevelt during those years, such as Landscape with the Sale of Joseph (Text drawn from Posada Kubissa, T.: Pintura holandesa en el Museo Nacional del Prado. Catálogo razonado, 2009, p. 331).