My doctoral research examines embedded devotional objects in medieval mural decoration. These objects—relics and icon panels—defy easy categorization into the conventional groupings of icons and narratives. While embedded objects participate as narrative elements in the pictorial cycles in which they appear, they simultaneously assert their visible difference from them. My dissertation is the first to analyze these mixed media, mixed-image type ensembles. Tracing exemplary cases in Rome, Naples, and Padua, I argue that distinct framing strategies were deployed to impart an aesthetic of materiality and portability on the embedded object, thereby authenticating it as sacred matter. I complement this formal analysis with the evidence of medieval miracle stories that describe the transfiguration of mural decoration. As such, areas of intermediality index the medieval understanding that mural decoration had the potential for miraculous manifestation. By elucidating the changing role of materiality in signaling sacred presence, my project sheds new light on the nuanced ways in which medieval designers negotiated icon and narrative, cult object and didactic picture, in monumental mural decoration.