A fifth-century B.C. statue of the goddess Aphrodite held court in Rome yesterday as the trial of a former curator at the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles and an American antiquities dealer resumed after a long summer hiatus. Fausto Guarnieri, who once worked for Italy’s art-theft squad, testified that nearly 20 years ago tomb robbers led him to a site in Sicily where the statue had been dug up. The limestone-and-marble sculpture, now a highlight of the Getty Museum’s antiquities collection in Malibu, Calif., forms part of the case against the former curator, Marion True, who is accused of dealing in stolen artifacts. Italy has also demanded that the statue be returned. But Ms. True’s lawyers argued that after Italy was officially advised in 1988 that the Getty Museum had acquired the statue, its government showed little interest in the Aphrodite’s origins for almost two decades. “Italy never questioned the purchase,” said one of the defense lawyers, Francesco Isolabella. “Now, years later, it’s become a crime.” The trial is being closely watched by American museums whose antiquities collections are also in the sights of Italian prosecutors.