‘The Field of Cloth of Gold’ was the name given to a meeting between Francis I of France and Henry VIII of England in June, 1520. The meeting lasted for twenty days, during which the kings visited, dined, jousted and excelled in theatrical acts of courtesy and friendship. Henry held court in a specially built summer palace with an embattled gate ornamented with statues of men in various attitudes of war, ceilings covered with white silk, roofs studded with roses on a ground of gold, banners painted by Holbein, the whole supported by a great pillar wreathed in gold, surrounded by four gilt lions and surmounted by a blind Cupid. Francis rested in a tent ‘as high as the tallest tower’, with thirty-two sides, covered in cloth of gold with stripes of blue velvet ‘powdered’ with golden fleurs-de-lis, and attached to the tent by violet taffeta imported from Italy. At the summit stood a life-size statue of St. Michael, patron saint of France and of the royal order of chivalry.