The church is composed of a living room (in German Hallenkirchen) three ships separated by four solid pillars, being the largest central ship, is covered with vaulted vaults in the center and in the corners, being the remaining vaults of arista, all consist of a remarkable and delicate mannerist decoration that augurs the end of the renaissance and the beginning of the baroque. The major chapel, which stands out for its great breadth, is a rectangular space that is covered with a half-orange vault on the breast with the shield of the bishop of Jaén, Sancho Dávila Toledo. You can see the image of the head of the parish in a temple of the 1960s that replaces the former altarpiece lost by the religious persecution of the Civil War, and paintings from the early years of the 20th century. At the foot of the temple is the chorus silery, in Baroque style, of great beauty and quality and one of the best in the province. The sacristy stands out with its drawers linked to Esteban Jamete, beautiful ternos of the Xvi century and Eucharistic vessels

The canvas, owned by D. Jerónimo de Sanvitores and de la Portilla, accidentally arrives in this villa after being named, this noble burgalés, corridor of Guadix. It was a copy of the Christ of Burgos, which was sold today in the cathedral of that city. The story of a series of miraculous events, spread through Eastern Andalusia, and once the canvas is donated to this parish, there will be many pilgrims who approach it, generating a high number of donations that, well managed, accelerated the pace of construction.

The process of building and furnishing the temple is very wide, not ending until the beginning of the 19th century with the construction of the sacristy. The works began at the feet; thus, already advanced in the 17th century, the main facade and the first two bodies of the tower, the choir and the first two lateral chapels had been raised. In the 18th century, the header (where the altar is located), the bell body and the two remaining side chapels are erected. For Lázaro Gila Medina, to which we follow in this text, we are facing an interesting example of the Andalusian baroque, although in some specific details, the neoclasicism abounds.

The plant is a Latin cross inscribed in a rectangle, called "drawer," which is typical of the baroque. He rose up under the title of the Expectation of Mary, and since 1637 he was also a sanctuary of the Holy Christ of Burgos. Throughout the 20th century he suffered the loss of many of his movable goods, much of the paintings and the altarpieces of the side chapels, which are not preserved. However, the church was declared a historical - artistic monument of a national character (Real. D. 3306 / 1981); today, Good of Cultural Interest. The documentation of the parish archive, since the same 16th century, has been kept in full.

The election was in the Baezan noble family of Los Benavides. The transfer of the patronate was made in Valencia de Benavides, being its descendants and, after solving various disputes, the promoters of such an important company, which certainly intended to emulate the funeral chapel of the Saviour of Ubeda, built by the secretary of the Emperor Charles V, Francisco de los Cobos. The will of Valencia de Benavides, granted in 1538, requires the endowments to complete the factory, which is obviously intended for its burial and descendants. The work of the new church had to begin at the beginning of the 1540's, and it was extended for many years, since the major chapel had not yet been completed in 1563.

In the visit of Philip IV to the city of Baeza in 1624 the chapel is finished, not so the rest of the body of the temple, whose construction was extended until well into the 17th century. But the misfortune is going to pursue this great work, because in the mid-17th century it already needed to be repaired. In the early 19th century the header was ruined by a seismic movement, which forced the disassembly of what was left of it. In the 1850 Parcerisa engraving, the romantic aspect it presents is total ruin and abandonment. The rest of the church and the convent also underwent numerous transformations throughout the 19th and 20th centuries to adapt the architectural complex to new uses: flour factory, theatre and housing. The restoration and consolidation of the whole was carried out, not without criticism, between 1986 and 1988 for its preparation as an auditorium, leaving the main chapel discovered and separated from the rest of the body of the church by a large glass. The cloister and other units were transferred to the Vandelvira Restaurant in 1990.

The one chosen to raise such a monumental chapel was Andrés de Vandelvira, master barber, already well known for his great projects in other populations of the Loma. Although the contract of works between the Benavides, the friars of San Francisco and Vandelvira has not yet been discovered, his authorship is given by the testimony of his son Alonso by referring to the "cross chapel" in his famous Treaty of Architecture: "This chapel in San Francisco in the city of Baeza by my father and I understand is the best particular chapel and more well ordered and adorned in our Spain, it has sixty feet of hollow without the inings that has 8 feet."

In this factory Vandelvira works freely, out of impositions as in the Salvador of Ubeda. It sheds the Gothic cruises and the grotesques, incorporating the ornament more clearly in relation to the architectural elements. In his conception he also moves away from what is to be realized in the Saviour, as he proposes a great square space covered by a vase reinforced by cruises that come to coincide with the pairs of columns of the toral arches, rising on the funerary altards, of which only the Gospel has been preserved. These serlian tread stables are framed by large arcosols and double columns of elongated canon. At the header is the main altar above three acasetonated arcosols.

The breadth of the iconographic program developed was to follow a plan perfectly conceived and determined by the funerary character of the whole: Evangelists, Fathers of the Church, Saints; in the preserved petreous altarpiece we have funerary and heraldic symbols, the Epiphany on the left, the worship of the pastors on the right (with the date of 1560), in the center of the Resurrection (eardrum) with the Tetramorphs. Of excellent quality are also the heads of the craftsmen of the arcosoles of the main altar, as well as their eardrums of mythical inspiration and the semicircle with a Dolored Mater with the lying Christ, recurring with the funerary theme of the project. The fundamental sculptors of this extraordinary iconographic program, in a regular state of conservation, were Esteban Jamete and Juan de Reolidgen.

Its interior consists of a large ship with sections of fajon arches, while the presbytery is covered with canyon vault with cassettes. The Baroque shrimp of the Christ of the Vera Cruz stands out.

The oldest piece is the southern cover, of Gothic style and of such a trace to that of San Miguel; the north is from the 17th century, with the shields of the Valenzuela family, raising on it an angry swordsman, which came to replace its primitive tower located at the head and from which there are no remains. The plant that has reached this day includes a division in three ships and five sections, with greater proportions being the section of the header and the central ship. Today it has no apse, its head being a wall running and flat. The oldest remains correspond to the first section, covered by three gothic vaults of complex trace and a great constructive stretch (starry the sides, of tercelets the central), which are based on two pillars free of square section, with four half Tuscan columns attached, and on a series of mends on the walls. It is in this part of the temple that we can relate the few documentary data that have been published about it. The Gothic vaults according to Domínguez Cubero can be attributed to the Sunday of Tolosa. In 1559, the bishop Don Diego Tavera (1555-1560) ordered in the visit of this temple: "(...) that the altarpiece of Miguel Ruiz be finished. They say that the altarpiece is finished and that the work of singing that is in charge of Maese Domingo (...)." In the same year I know "(...). They discharge a thousand four hundred and ninety-six maravedis that I pay to Baldenvira because he came from Jaén to give the trace of the work that to do the said Sunday master who came three times to see the work (...)." From this documentation it seems to be inferred that the temple initiated by Maese Domingo is visited by Vandelvira, which would give new traces to follow the factory based on pillars of siloesque tradition and boned vaults. This new church project must have had problems years after the intervention of Andrés de Vandelvira, as it appears from the will of the beneficiary Juan de Mestanza of 1585, in which he orders to deliver ten ducats "(...) for the work of the postcards of Lord Santiago (...)," in the opinion of Domínguez Cubero. As a result of this situation, the project drawn up by Vandelvira, in which a church of living room with exempt pillars and its traditional vaults (with the exception of the gots of the first stretch) were most likely to be radically structured in the mid-17th century. The three resulting ships are now built with half-point arches on quadrangular pillars, covering the whole of the three resulting ships with half-barrel vaults with lunts and fajon arches. In the 18th century, specifically around the year 1733, the Chapel of the Christ of the Column was built, embellished with rich decoration of Baroque yeseries of Cordoba inspiration. The headline sculpture, a high-quality Renaissance size, is now sold in the parish of Santa Maria.

OTHER ARTISTICAL MANIFESTIONS

This temple has come to our days very busy in relation to its movable goods, but it had them and of high artistic quality. Some of them were lost forever, but others have been replaced in other churches in the city. To the parish of Santa Maria they took away the famous Renaissance size of the Christ of the Column, a beautiful prayer of about 1575 (placed in the chapel of the Reinous) and a canvas representing the adoration of the Eucharist, of Baroque style, attributed to Bernabé de Ayala.

It is composed of an extended body in which a vain of ear molding is opened and, aligned with it, but in height, an episcopal shield. A ledge separates it from the bell tower. In this one they open holes with a half-point arch that rest on imposts, which are extended as a list throughout the perimeter. A dial watch has been placed on the foreground of a hole. A narrow body receives the cover. The painted facade at the foot of the church and its cover are also interesting.

In the 13th century, during the reign of Fernando III (1217-1252) or that of his son Alfonso X (12122-1284), the columns were used to make a fully Romanesque church of three ships and head of three semicircular apses.

The portico is also of Romanesque trace, although in it you can see the point of the outer arches, characteristic this from the time of transition to the Gothic period. The columns inside the temple are cylindrical and base by imitating the old attic with the circular molding and he painted it square. The capitals are primordial and have a wide variety of motifs, from geometric figures and vegetable ornaments of leaves, rosetons and fruits, to animal figures such as lions, bulls, fish, goats and human figures.

The arches are pointed and the roof presents in the part corresponding to the cruise, a large vault of stone edge and in that of the ships a wooden craft. At the entrance of the presbytery there are two half columns with capitel with saw tooth ornaments, which support a large opival arc.

By the 16th century the church's enclosure was extended on the old trail, surely for greater needs of worship. The 16th century also brought together the artistic altarpiece of the Altar Mayor, which serves as an armour to the shrimp of the Virgin.

Another point to be highlighted is the chorus gate and silery both of a silver style. The gate of this, is adorned by a series of columns where there are carved various ornamental motifs, such as human and animal heads as well as fruit clusters.

The capital of these columns is Ionian. At the top door of the entrance door to the choir there is a large shield with the weapons of Don Francisco Delgado, which was preached in Jaén from 1566 to 1576. The chorus's silery is kept in good condition and all its chairs over half a shell and separated by columnites, where there are carved the same themes of the columns of the gate and as in this and on the central chair, are the weapons of the Bishop of Jaén indicated above.

The bottom of the seats is also finely worked, presenting geometric motifs. On both sides of the choir there are so many other chapels that have the wooden gate following that of the choir and with the same ornamental sizes.