Delacroix uses intense lighting to employ the vignette style. The sun shines at the precise moment of the chaos at the center of the canvas. The freshly murdered concubine and the concubine being slaughtered are directly illuminated in comparison to the destruction that surrounds them.
There seems to be a foggy haze over the rest of the corpses in the painting and they recede into the background. Even the king himself, in his disdainful pose, is slightly hidden in the shadows. Delacroix chose to direct attention to the most hectic and disturbing part of the scene