The church icon depicting Archdeacon Stephen was discovered by young employees of the local town-forming enterprise during a trip to the countryside. They found icons that had been thrown away, collected them, brought them to Sarov in their own cars, and handed them over to the museum. In this way, the icons were saved. In the 1990s, they were featured in a new museum exhibition dedicated to the history of the Sarov Monastery.

The icon “Archdeacon Stephen” used to belong to a church. It was featured in the iconostasis or maybe a deacon’s doors. In this icon, Stephen the Protomartyr is shown as a young man with long, flowing hair, wearing a sticharion (a long clergy robe) with an orarion ribbon, girdled crosswise in the style of an archdeacon. It is known that deacons only wear this attire during the liturgy, after the Lord’s Prayer, preparing themselves for administering the sacraments. The archdeacon’s young face conveys the icon painter’s idea of angelic beauty. According to the Gospels, when Archdeacon Stephen was preaching, his face shone with unearthly beauty.