The area which you could paint in wet plaster within a day. In Italian the word literally meant a day’s work (giorno = day). Fresco painting has always had the constraint of having to be completed before the plaster dried on the wall. Thus seams between the giornatas are also clearly visible in old frescos. Some may even correspond closely with the actual length of scaffolding boards used. This is evident higher up towards the ceilings and less so at the bottom where moving a scaffold was not the impediment.
