The painting entered the Museum as an original work by Jan Both, an attribution that has been maintained in subsequent catalogues and which is also supported by Valdivieso (1973) and Barghahn (1986). Steland ascribes it, with reservations, to Herman van Swanevelt. Following the recent cleaning of the picture, the attribution to Jan Both would appear to be correct. The handling of the leaves of the trees as well as the clouds and the background is characteristic of the painter.

The painting repeats the composition of Landscape with Carmelites (P2058) and even features a recreation of the temple of Marcus Curtius (Rome) in the background. Here too the foreground and background are joined by a small tree located in the mid-ground. Nevertheless, in the case of this painting the composition is more dynamic: the trees are not arranged in parallel verticals but are intertwined, and in the foreground the figures advance towards the viewer along a path that originates in the background. As for the handling of light, the artist no longer uses spotlighting to emphasise the foreground figures, a device characteristic of Herman van Swanevelt`s landscapes with hermits and still employed by Both in Landscape with Carmelites (P2058). Instead, all the elements of the picture are integrated by a naturalistic, homogeneous lighting, as in his vertical landscapes Baptism of the Eunuch of Queen Candace (P2060) and Taking the Cattle out (P2061), with which it also bears great stylistic similarities. This, coupled with the fact that it is larger than the landscapes with hermits, suggests that this and the following landscape were part of the second shipment of paintings and should therefore be dated to between 1639 and 1641. The figures are characteristic of the type that populates Jan Both`s landscapes. In early Museum catalogues they are attributed to Andries Both (1612/13-1642) (Posada Kubissa, T.: Pintura holandesa en el Museo Nacional del Prado. Catálogo razonado, 2009, p. 330).