The J Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles has agreed to return 40 objects from its antiquities collection that Italy contends were looted, ending a long and complex negotiation, Italian and museum officials said. Details of the accord were not made public, but the 40 pieces include 26 works the Getty had already agreed to return to Italy last November. When talks started a year ago, Italy had presented the museum with documentation regarding 52 artifacts that the culture ministry said were looted; it eventually dropped six from that list.

The accord Wednesday is a compromise between the two positions. A joint statement from the museum and the culture ministry said the dates for the return of the art would be agreed on soon. “This accord has historic significance,” Culture Minister Francesco Rutelli said. A statue of a cult deity usually identified as Aphrodite, one of the Getty’s prized pieces, is among the works returning to Italy, although the statue, which the Getty bought for $18 million, will remain at the museum until 2010.

The fate of another statue, a fourth-century BC bronze of a young athlete that caused the breakdown of previous negotiations, has been put on hold so that an Italian court can conduct an independent investigation of how it was found and left Italy in the 1960s. The deal took so long to broker because of the actions both sides have taken: the Getty by hiring a tough Los Angeles law firm and the Italians by threatening cultural embargoes against the Getty. The embargo, which would have halted research projects and loans of artworks, was to go into effect on Wednesday. The Getty deal is another step in the Italian campaign to end the looting of its archeological heritage to enrich museums and private collections. In 2006, Italy made similar deals with the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

What is unclear is what effect, if any, the agreement will have on the trial of the Getty’s former curator of antiquities, Marion True, who is facing charges of trafficking in looted art.

Several of the pieces that the Getty has agreed to return are part of the prosecution’s case against True and Robert Hecht, an American antiquities dealer who is also standing trial in Rome. Both deny any wrongdoing. Francesco Isolabella, one of True’s Italian lawyers, commended the Getty agreement but did not concede that his client had bought anything in bad faith. “What I can say is that when Ms True bought the objects she could not know if they had been illegally excavated, and I can also say that Ms True was the first to change the acquisition policies at the Getty to make them much stricter,” he said.