Which French emperor kept the Mona Lisa in his bedroom?

Napoleon kept the Mona Lisa in his bedroom. After the French Revolution, the painting entered the Louvre’s collection, but it spent a short period in Napoleon Bonaparte’s bedroom at the Tuileries Palace while he ruled France.

Napoleon was not the painting’s original French owner. Leonardo da Vinci brought the portrait to France in the early sixteenth century, and it entered the collection of King Francis I. Centuries later, Napoleon’s residence in the Tuileries placed the work in an unusually personal setting before it returned to public museum display.

A common mix-up is the claim that Napoleon stole the Mona Lisa from Italy. He did seize or receive many Italian artworks during his campaigns, but Leonardo had brought this painting to France long before Napoleon’s rise. Napoleon’s association with the portrait comes from its brief stay in his bedroom, not from ownership of the original theft.