LOS ANGELES -- In a deal to end years of controversy, the J. Paul Getty Museum agreed yesterday to return to Italy 40 antiquities from its collection, including several masterpieces and its prized 5th-century BC statue of the goddess Aphrodite.
The draft agreement, reached over an exchange of faxes Tuesday, includes broader cultural cooperation and loans. It is expected to be finalized in the coming days. With the deal, the Getty will avoid a threatened cultural embargo and will settle its longstanding dispute with Italy over the purchase of antiquities illegally excavated and smuggled out of the country.
The agreement marks the most significant victory yet for Italy's decadelong campaign to repatriate stolen artifacts that were bought by American museums. Earlier agreements with New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art and Boston's Museum of Fine Arts included fewer important objects than the deal with the Getty, which from the beginning has been the most deeply implicated in Italy's investigation.
Neither party would release a list of the 40 objects being returned, but the Getty already had offered the return of 26 items, including 10 objects it considers masterpieces of the collection. Among them are a statue of the god Apollo, a sculpture of griffins attacking a fallen doe, and several Greek vases.
Returning the objects will strike a serious blow to the Getty's antiquities collection, one of the country's best and the focus of the newly renovated Getty Villa. Several objects being returned are centerpieces of the museum's galleries near Malibu.
"I think there's sadness, obviously, over the fact that many of the beautiful objects are going to be leaving the Getty Villa," Getty spokesman Ron Hartwig said. "But there's satisfaction that the issue has been resolved in a way that leads to a renewed collaboration with Italy. It does signal a finish of a period of trouble."
Not covered by the agreement is the "Getty bronze," a 4th-century BC statue of an athlete, the fate of which had been a sticking point in the negotiations. Both parties agreed to postpone discussion about the statue until a new criminal investigation of it is complete.
Also unaddressed is the fate of Marion True, the Getty's former antiquities curator who is on trial in Rome facing charges of trafficking in looted art.
For years, the Getty resisted returning the contested objects to Italy for fear it would hurt True's defense. She had recommended the purchase of 10 of the 26 objects previously offered by the Getty, and her pursuit of the Aphrodite statue has been a major focus of her trial.
All antiquities she recommended were approved by both the Getty's director and its board of trustees before being acquired, but only True was charged with a crime. In a recent letter to Getty officials obtained by the Los Angeles Times, True complained that the Getty's return of objects involved in her criminal case had hurt her defense.
"Marion's situation is tragic," Hartwig said.
"We have, however, tried throughout this process to keep the two issues separate and focus on resolving the claims for the objects with Italy with the great hope that it would have a positive impact on Marion's situation."
Among details yet to be determined is the precise date when the objects will be returned to Italy.
Some items might be gone as early as the fall, although the statue of Aphrodite, the most prominent of all and a cornerstone of the Getty's collection, will stay until December 2010.