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This is a favorable feature in a publication that the president has long exalted – with one exception. The cover picture, the president decreed, ""might be the most terrible in history".

Time magazine's paean to Trump's role in brokering a ceasefire in Gaza, featured on its November 10 cover, was paired with a image of the president captured from underneath and with the sun positioned behind him.

The result, Trump claims, is ""extremely poor".

"Time Magazine wrote a fairly positive story about me, but the picture may be the lowest quality in history", he shared on Truth Social.

“They ‘disappeared’ my hair, and then had a shape drifting on top of my head that appeared as a hovering tiara, but an very tiny one. Quite bizarre! I consistently avoided taking pictures from underneath angles, but this is a extremely poor picture, and deserves to be called out. What are they doing, and why?”

Trump has made clear his wish to be pictured on Time magazine's front page and did so four times last year. The preoccupation has reached Trump’s golf clubs – previously, the publication requested to remove fake issues exhibited in a few of his establishments.

The most recent cover image was shot by Graeme Sloane for a news agency at the White House on 5 October.

The perspective highlighted negatively Trump’s chin and neck – a chance that the governor of California Newsom took advantage of, with his communications team tweeting a version with the offending area obscured.

{The living Israeli hostages in Gaza have been released under the first phase of Trump's ceasefire agreement, alongside a freeing of Palestinian inmates. The arrangement could be a defining accomplishment of Trump's second term, and it could mark a key shift for that part of the world.

At the same time, a defence of his portrayal has emerged from an unexpected source: the director of information at Moscow's diplomatic office intervened to condemn the "revealing" image choice.

"It’s astonishing: a photograph exposes those who picked it than about the subject. Only sick people, people driven by hatred and resentment –perhaps even perverts – could have picked this picture", the official shared on her social channel.

"And given the complimentary photos of Biden that the periodical displayed on the cover, despite his physical infirmity, the story is simply self-incriminating for the publication", she said.

The response to Trump’s questions – what were Time’s editors doing, and why? – may be something to do with innovatively depicting a feeling of authority says a picture editor, an Australian publication's photo editor.

"The actual photo itself is well-executed," she says. "They chose this shot because they wanted Trump to look impressive. Staring up at someone evokes a feeling of their grandeur and his expression actually looks thoughtful and almost slightly angelic. It's uncommon you see pictures of him in such a peaceful state – the image has a softness to it."

His hair appears to “disappear” because the light from behind has washed out that area of the image, generating a radiant circle, she says. Even though the article's title complements the president's look in the image, "one cannot constantly gratify the individual in question."

Nobody enjoys being captured from low angles, and although all of the artistic aspects of the image are quite powerful, the aesthetics are unflattering."

The Guardian contacted Time magazine for comment.