Madonna accepted undisclosed damages for invasion of privacy and infringement of copyright on Tuesday over "purloined" pictures of her wedding to Guy Ritchie.

The pictures appeared in the Mail on Sunday newspaper after the US pop diva filed for divorce from the British filmmaker last year.

Madonna — who initially sought £5-million (R59-million) — was not at London's High Court for her action against Associated Newspapers, which publishes the Mail on Sunday.

But her lawyer John Kelly said the damages would go to her Raising Malawi charity.

Madonna went to great lengths to ensure her December 2000 wedding to Ritchie in a Scottish castle was entirely private, Kelly said.

But in 2003 an interior designer working on Madonna's home in California secretly copied 27 photos from her wedding album, which were subsequently offered for sale by a Los Angeles woman to the Mail on Sunday in June 2008.

The tabloid waited until Madonna's divorce announcement last November, when there was increased interest in her marriage, before buying the pictures and publishing 10 of them.

Associated Newspapers' lawyer Niri Shan said the publisher accepted it acted wrongly, offered its apologies to Madonna, destroyed the images, and agreed to pay her damages and legal costs.

AFP