The project must have been delayed for some years, since it will be from 1537 when Don Rodrigo de Messia and Mayor de Fonseca reach an agreement with Fray Alonso de Oropesa, superior of the Santo Domingo de Baeza convent, by which, and after the pertinent notarial deed, they made a donation to the order of Santo Domingo of various properties in the town of La Guardia, plus certain amounts of money to be able to build the dependencies of the future convent; the founders reserved the main chapel for burial of themselves and their successors. In 1538 the works began, being in front of them the master Juan Rodríguez de Requena, but this first site was abandoned.

In 1542 the project began again in a beautiful place, granting a deed between Fray Bartolomé de Santo Domingo, vicar of the monastery, and Master Domingo de Tolosa, an important master stonemason of Biscayan origin. Domingo de Tolosa undertook to build the main chapel, the transept and two collateral chapels in the conventual church according to a signed plan of his name. Juan Rodríguez de Requena and Francisco del Castillo "El Viejo" would work with him on site.

The possible death of Domingo de Tolosa perhaps determined the entry into the construction process of Andrés de Vandelvira, a master stonemason already well-known and at the time immersed in the works of Salvador de Úbeda and San Francisco de Baeza. At the end of 1542 Andrés de Vandelvira was in charge of the temple factory, in which “certain improvements” were made, according to the architect's confession in a lawsuit with the Dominican order in 1564 due to the delay in the work. Vandelvira, due to various circumstances not yet sufficiently clarified, abandoned the construction, which would be retaken from 1570 by Francisco del Castillo "El Joven", who finished the chapels towards the feet and completed the cloister started by Vandelvira. In La Guardia a typical conventual church with a Latin cross was developed, but its section of the nave, shortened and widened, blurs that plane to make it another closer to a centralized body.

Without a doubt, Andrés de Vandelvira prints his personal stamp in this church, introducing substantial alterations to the original design. These changes can be seen in the main chapel or ochavo of La Guardia, as immortalized by his son Alonso de Vandelvira in his famous Book of Traças, inspired by the solution of the chapel of the Junterones of the Murcia cathedral, in the cruise with its ribbed vault with a half orange lantern, as well as in the architectural order that articulates the entire elevation from the four corner buttresses, of siloesque inspiration and beautiful canteril invoice. Inside your school the vault of the feet and the high choir can be enrolled. The plan introduced in La Guardia, in the opinion of Professor Galera Andreu, is foreign to the Andalusian circle, its origin being very likely from the Castilian sphere, and more specifically Salamanca, if we take into account the origin of the founders, who seem to take as a reference the conventual church of Las Bernardas in his city, the work of the great architect Rodrigo Gil de Hontañón, a temple with a nave with a transept and a chancel covered with a large veneer on horns that are also veined.

In La Guardia, this octagonal structure of the main chapel is used to place the arms of the founders supported on the trunks by the virtues (Justice, Strength, Faith and Charity), those of the order and a wide iconographic program in the coffin, whose The purpose is none other than the exaltation of the Dominican order and the mysteries of the rosary: ??the Virgin with the child Jesus, Saint Dominic de Guzmán, King David, Saint Catherine of Siena, prophets, holy virgins, the doctors of the Church, saints martyrs, Dominican saints and apostles. The reliefs inserted in the vault of the transept, carved by the sculptor Juan de Reolid, represent the agony, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Of the dependencies attached to the temple, we must highlight the staircase, which joins the cloister in its two heights and the roofs of the church, giving way to the sacristy, in which a Renaissance paneled ceiling decorated with interesting carved footings, dated in the year 1547.

The convent, confiscated in the 19th century, is currently - after being used for housing and an oil factory - partially demolished and looted. However, important remains can still be seen in the various rooms: coffered ceilings with their serrated footings, covered with beautiful coats of arms of the founders and remains of fresco paintings. Of its cloister only part of the double gang is preserved attached to the wall of the church, with middle arches and lowered lowered in Ionic columns. Its beautiful Renaissance fountain has been found since the mid-20th century in the lower cloister of the Provincial Council of Jaén.

OTHER NON-ARCHITECTURAL ARTISTIC MANIFESTATIONS.

The extraordinary sculptural program inserted in the architecture was completed with another pictorial program, both in the church and in the convent rooms, although today it has become very decimated and in a regular state of preservation. The message of these paintings, like the one developed in the sculptures, is clearly counter-reformist, and therefore the intention is to counter the Protestant heresy. There are three 16th century murals (two of them located in niches of the transept, the other in a chapel of the Epistle), in which iconographies referring to the Order of Santo Domingo, San Antonio Abad and San Jerónimo are shown. In the staircase of the convent there is a painting that represents a Christ of the Expiration; other pictorial manifestations are distributed by the old convent rooms and in the choir, in which hangs a Baptism of Christ (S. XVIII). In the sacristy, the rich coffered ceiling (1547), decorated with artistic dogs, and the ewer and table carved in the 18th century in black jasper are worthy of mention.