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This is a favorable story in a magazine that the president has long exalted – but for one catch. The front-page image, the president decreed, ""might be the most terrible in history".

Time's paean to Trump's role in mediating a Gaza ceasefire, headlining its early November edition, was accompanied by a photograph of Trump captured from underneath and with the sun positioned behind him.

The result, the president asserts, is ""extremely poor".

"Time wrote a fairly positive story about me, but the picture may be the lowest quality in history", Trump wrote on his social media platform.

“They ‘disappeared’ my hair, and then had an object hovering on top of my head that resembled a floating crown, but an remarkably little one. Truly strange! I never liked taking pictures from underneath angles, but this is a extremely poor picture, and merits public condemnation. Why did they do this, and why?”

Donald Trump has shown no secret of his desire to appear on Time’s cover and did so on four occasions in the previous year. This fixation has reached Trump’s golf clubs – in 2017, the magazine asked him to remove fabricated front pages exhibited in some of his properties.

The most recent cover image was captured by Graeme Sloane for a news agency at the presidential residence on October 5.

The shot's viewpoint did no favours for the president's jawline and throat – an opening that California governor Gavin Newsom did not miss, with the governor's office tweeting a version with the offending area blurred.

{The hostages from Israel in Gaza have been freed under the first phase of the president's diplomatic initiative, together with a freeing of Palestinian inmates. The arrangement might turn into a major success of his next term, and it may represent a strategic turning point for the Middle East.

Simultaneously, a defence of his portrayal has come from unusual quarters: the spokesperson at the Russian foreign ministry came forward to condemn the "revealing" image choice.

It's amazing: a photo says more about those who picked it than about the person in it. Only sick people, people obsessed with malice and hatred –possibly even deviants – could have selected such an image", Maria Zakharova posted on her social channel.

In light of the positive pictures of President Biden that the same publication featured on the front, even with his age-related challenges, the story is simply self-incriminating for the magazine", she noted.

The answer to his queries – what did the editors intend, and why? – might involve artistically representing a feeling of authority stated by Carly Earl, an Australian publication's photo editor.

The photograph technically is well-executed," she explains. "They chose this shot because they wanted Trump to look impressive. Looking up at a person evokes a feeling of their importance and Trump’s face actually looks contemplative and almost a bit ethereal. It’s not often you see photos of Trump in such a peaceful state – the picture feels tender."

Trump’s hair appears to “disappear” because the sunlight behind him has overexposed that part of the image, generating a radiant circle, she explains. And, while the story’s headline pairs nicely with Trump’s expression in the image, "one cannot constantly gratify the individual in question."

Few people appreciate being photographed from below, and while all of the thematic components of the image are very strong, the appearance are unflattering."

The Guardian approached the magazine for a statement.