“The ex-Marquis had pulled the old straw hat over his eyes, and the black shade of the brim cut his face so squarely in two that it seemed to be wearing one of the black half-masks of their pursuers. The fancy tinted Syme’s overwhelming sense of wonder. Was he wearing a mask? Was anyone wearing a mask? Was anyone anything? This wood of witchery, in which men’s faces turned black and white by turns, in which their figures first swelled into sunlight and then faded into formless night, this mere chaos of chiaroscuro (after the clear daylight outside), seemed to Syme a perfect symbol of the world in which he had been moving for three days, this world where men took off their beards and their spectacles and their noses, and turned into other people.”
Between this and the Rembrandt reference in an earlier post, Chesterton has created a scene of Baroque theater. Similar to a Caravaggio painting, the book creates a scene of chaos with a touch of deception and illusion. It makes sense, since illusion and deceptions drives the plot and characters to the very colorful finale.
Art History Ramblings 