This lovely icon was likely painted in Crete. In the 1200's Crete was the property of Venice and so the Cretan icon painters developed a mixed Byzantine-Western style. And while it was very common in the Middle Ages to see the Mother of God depicted holding the Christ Child, more rarely was she depicted as nursing her Infant.
Sometimes a Christian can become a prude — here scandalized by the very non-sexual breast of the Virgin Mary. But let's remember, the Incarnation means that God became a human being and human beings come into the world as babies. Babies need to be washed, fed, burped, have their diapers changed and their noses wiped. For all their precious-ness, sometimes being a baby is an inglorious thing. And God became just that, a vulnerable, inglorious baby. With this as the starting point of our religion we might wonder how any Christian (or the Church itself) could ever become so closely identified with power.
This icon has been battered a bit. We can see the nail heads that have been hammered around the icon. Most curiously we see that the tin frame originally covered the top of the Virgin's halo and that someone took a metal scissor and hacked away at it to free up the halo-light emanating from Mary's face. God has come into our dangerous world.
Oh Lady, free up the Christ-light entrusted to me at the font of Baptism — that I might also shine like the sun.
