The J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles acquired the sculpture in 1985, and decided to return it after similar fragments were found at a shrine in central Sicily.
The museum said on Thursday it had decided to repatriate Bluebeard three years ago, but had kept the statue in storage until Sicilian officials arrived to pick it up this week.
Getty museum officials and Sicilian researchers worked together to ascertain where the head came from. Curls of its hair had been found in a shrine to ancient Greek harvest goddess Demeter.
The head is due in Italy on Friday and will be sent to the Aidone museum to which the Getty has already returned the “Cult Statue of a Goddess”, known in Italy as the “Morgantina Venus”.
Italy’s archaeological venues have been plundered so extensively that the country set up a police corps dedicated to tracking down treasures which are dug up and smuggled abroad.
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