Italian prosecutors in the trial of a former curator at the J. Paul Getty Museum on Monday presented dozens of photographs and documents seized from art dealers that they said would prove that the curator knowingly trafficked in looted antiquities.

Marion True, forced to quit the Getty in October, is being tried here on charges of criminal conspiracy to receive stolen goods and the illicit receipt of archeological objects. Her co-defendant is Robert E. Hecht Jr., an American art dealer based in Paris. Neither was present in court Monday, and both have asserted their innocence.

Prosecutors on Monday also described the system in which Getty suppliers allegedly used world-famous auction houses and private collections to launder artifacts unearthed and smuggled out of Italy.

The trial, which has implications for antiquity-collecting museums worldwide, has been proceeding in fits and starts since the summer. Monday's hearing included the first presentation of evidence in open court.

Most of the photographs and documents displayed Monday were seized at Hecht's Paris home in 2001 and at a warehouse in Switzerland in 1995. The warehouse was owned by Giacomo Medici, a dealer who was convicted last year on the same charges that True and Hecht now face. He is appealing a 10-year sentence.

Lead prosecutor Paolo Ferri said the evidence showed that objects looted in Italy ended up at the Getty and other prominent institutions such as New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. He said that True, Hecht and Medici conspired to make that happen.

Among the material confiscated in the raids were thousands of Polaroid snapshots and other photographs. The prosecution presented slides of some of the pictures, showing cracked Etruscan vases, fragmented marble Roman statues and pieces of Greek urns, all apparently freshly excavated. Some were still caked with dirt, others wrapped in Italian newspaper or stacked in Italian boxes.

Each of the dozen or so Polaroids was paired with what prosecutors said was the item in its eventually restored state and on display at the Getty or featured in Getty catalogs.

Maurizio Pellegrini, an archeological consultant to a regional ministry who testified on behalf of the prosecution, narrated the comparisons. Using a red-laser pointer, he indicated similarities between an item in a Polaroid and what he said was the same item at the Getty.

These included a black, 2,500-year-old amphora, or jug, with red athletic figures; a kylix, or decorative cup, attributed to the Greek painter Euphronios; and a series of frescoes believed to have been taken from Pompeii.

True's main defense attorney, Franco Coppi, agrees that many of the objects may have been taken out of Italy illegally. But he said his client made her acquisitions "convinced of their legitimate provenance."

Pellegrini also showed pictures of pages from a journal that he said Hecht had kept. It described meetings with reputed smugglers and plans to obtain new items. Defense attorneys objected repeatedly to Pellegrini's interpretation of the journal entries, but Judge Gustavo Barbalinardo allowed the testimony.

In the journal, Hecht recounts flying to Rome at the urging of a reputed smuggler and driving to Cerveteri, a site rich in looted tombs, to inspect a newly discovered psykter, a jar used to cool wine.

"I immediately sent photographs to M. True at J.P.G.M.," the journal entry says. "Her first reaction was enthusiastic…. She said to bring it to Malibu as soon as it was cleaned, and she did not find unreasonable the price of $700,000."