Deal reached over Monroe photos

A collection of Stern's pictures were sold at auction in December 2008

A US legal fight over seven nude photographs of Marilyn Monroe taken six weeks before her death has been settled amicably, lawyers have said.

The images were taken by photographer Bert Stern at the Bel Air Hotel in Los Angeles in 1962.

Mr Stern sued three photographers for $1.7m (£1.2m) last year as he initially believed the pictures had been stolen after lending them to a magazine.

The pictures will now be jointly published by all four photographers.

The photo session for Vogue magazine, which became known as The Last Sitting, is believed to be the final time the star posed for pictures.

The images show Monroe in various poses behind a piece of transparent, white gauzy fabric.

'Moving forward'

In the legal action, filed in September in New York's State Supreme Court, Mr Stern said he lent the pictures to a now-defunct magazine and that they were never returned.

The photographer said he did not realise the pictures were missing until he was approached by photographers Michael Weiss and Donald Penny, who had the images and wanted to license them.

The pair said colleague Robert Bryan had found the film in a rubbish bin in Manhattan in the 1970s and had kept it in a shoe box as memorabilia for the past 35 years.

Mr Stern sued them demanding the return of the photographs plus $1m (£682,000) and unspecified damages for lost income relating to the licensing of the images.

"The parties have resolved all issues and are moving forward amicably," Mr Weiss and Mr Penny's lawyer, Jamie Brickell, said in a statement.

Mr Brickell said Mr Stern acknowledged in the settlement that his clients did nothing wrong.

He added his clients never asked Mr Stern for any money and only discussed returning the transparencies in exchange for a set of prints that they could keep.

Mr Stern said in a statement that he no longer believed the pictures had been stolen.

His lawyer, Stephen Weingrad, said both parties will develop nine sets of photos from the transparencies and sell them.

He added the issue of how the proceeds would be distributed was confidential.

A previous collection of 36 photographs taken by Stern during The Last Sitting were auctioned in New York for nearly $150,000 (£1102,581) in December.