It has been suggested that Jan was involved, while in Milan, with the execution of several larger hermit-in-landscape paintings on panel in which the figures are attributed to him, the landscapes to another hand (the present painting and Ertz 1979 #21). I find this unlikely: Neither the landscapes nor the figures are attributed by Borromeo in his 1607 codicil (where he just says "a Flemish painter" or the 1618 Act of Donation. Luuk Pijl (Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, (Milan 2006), 125-126) now gives the landscapes to Coninxloo. Jones had suggested Vinckboons. I would suggest that the two landscapes were acquired by Borromeo after Jan’s time in Italy, and that he paid another artist to insert into them hermits in Jan’s manner. One of the hermits is copied from a Brueghel painting that Borromeo owned.