wp_list_pages with featured image (as background)

hey there,

i’m using

<ul class="item-wrapper"><?php wp_list_pages('title_li=&exclude=17' ); ?></ul>

to list all parent pages – and their children nested, and it works fine.

but i some of the pages have featured images assigend, which need to be displayd as the background-image of the page-item-container.

i already found a solution to display the images, but they where always contained in a img-tag.

is there a solution to my problem?

thanks in advance.