Sept. 25 (Bloomberg) -- The J. Paul Getty Museum said it will sign an agreement today to return 40 antiquities to the Italian government, after a dispute over stolen relics that rocked the reputation of the world's richest art institution.

The agreement will be signed by Getty Museum Director Michael Brand and the Italian government this afternoon in Rome, museum officials said yesterday at a press lunch in Los Angeles. The deal includes 39 objects from an original group of 52 sought by the Italians, plus one work added by the Getty after its own study into the origins of its collection.

The 40 pieces include one of the Getty's most important works, a marble and limestone sculpture of a goddess known as the Aphrodite, which the museum bought in 1988 for $18 million. They do not include the so-called Getty Bronze, or ``Statue of a Victorious Youth,'' which is the subject of a new legal hearing in the coastal city of Fano, Italy.

``An agreement about the fate of the Getty Bronze has been set aside until the conclusion of the Fano hearing,'' Getty spokesman Ron Hartwig said yesterday.

The Getty Bronze is a life-size Greek sculpture of a nude athlete made between 300 B.C. and 100 B.C. that the museum acquired in 1977 for $3.95 million. It's a highlight of the museum's collection, displayed in a special room of its own at the Getty Villa in Malibu.

James Wood, president of the Getty Trust -- the museum's parent, with a $5.6 billion endowment -- said the repatriation of the 40 antiquities would open the door to new Italian loans of artworks and greater collaboration on research projects.

Italian Loans

With the agreement, Italy will lend works to two Getty exhibitions later this year about Italian Renaissance artists, the sculptor Bernini and the painter brothers Taddeo and Federico Zuccaro, said David Bomford, the museum's associate director for collections.

Today's agreement follows years of negotiations with Italy and Greece over the Getty collection. After the U.S. and Italy signed a cultural treaty in 2001 that required the U.S. to return artifacts illegally exported after that year, the Italian government targeted antiquities in several U.S. collections, including the Getty, New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art and Boston's Museum of Fine Arts.

Italy also charged two art dealers and former Getty antiquities curator Marion True with buying looted artifacts. One dealer has been convicted and the other remains on trial in Rome with True, who denies the charges. True resigned her position at the museum in 2005 after an unrelated ethics scandal concerning a personal loan. The Getty continues to pay her legal bills for the Rome trial, which has not yet been resolved.

To contact the reporter on this story: Stephen West in Los Angeles at smwest@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: September 25, 2007 03:55 EDT