ABSTRACT
Sylvia Sleigh was the first to complete and exhibit her painting for The Sister Chapel. Sleigh nevertheless regarded Lilith as a component of The Sister Chapel and identified it as such. Like an impossible character in the lore of mythology, Sleigh's dual male and female nude stands on the flared laciniate petals of an oversized parrot tulip with a giant flame-like daylily (Hemerocallis) behind her head and shoulders, as if she has just emerged in the paradisiacal garden filled with verdant plants and enormous purple, pink, and white variegated tulips. To reinforce her feminist subject, Sleigh added the constellation Cassiopeia, named for the mythological queen who, chained to her throne and upside- down for half the year, was set among the stars as Poseidon's punishment for her audacious claim that she and her daughter, Andromeda, were more beautiful than the Nereids or Hera. Besides the parallel to Lilith as an ancient scorned woman, Cassiopeia had personal relevance for the artist.
