The paper examines the case of Margherita Farnese, whose marriage to Duke Vincenzo Gonzaga in 1581 had to be annulled because of a problematic sexual anatomy. As the the body of a rich, young and appropriately chaste princess suddenly started to be perceived as deviant so doctors from various courts converged to Mantua and Parma to give their opinion on what makes a female body typical. In working through the problematics of normal/subversive, I will discuss the medical discovery (actually, recovery) in the Renaissance of specific information about constitutive parts of the female sexual apparatus, the Church\u27s take on what makes a marriage validthe politicians\u27 need to guarantee an ordered successionč and the cultural hysteria coming from an inconvenient \u27hyster\u2
