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This is a positive feature in a periodical that the president has consistently praised – with one exception. The magazine's cover photo, Trump declared, ""might be the most terrible in history".

Time's tribute to Donald Trump's part in mediating a Gaza ceasefire, headlining its early November edition, was presented alongside a photograph of Trump taken from below while the sun shining from the back.

The outcome, the president asserts, is ""terrible".

"Time wrote a relatively good story about me, but the image may be the lowest quality in history", he shared on his preferred network.

“They removed my hair, and then had a shape drifting on top of my head that looked like a suspended coronet, but an very tiny one. Quite bizarre! I never liked taking pictures from underneath angles, but this is a terrible picture, and merits public condemnation. What are they doing, and why?”

The president has expressed obvious his ambition to feature on the cover of Time and did so multiple times in the past year. This fixation has extended to his golf courses – in 2017, the editors demanded to remove fake issues on display at some of his properties.

This issue's photograph was taken by a photographer for a news agency at the presidential residence on 5 October.

Its angle did no favours for the president's jawline and throat – an opening that the governor of California Gavin Newsom did not miss, with the governor's office sharing an altered image with the offending area obscured.

{The living Israeli hostages detained in Gaza have been freed under the initial stage of Trump's ceasefire agreement, alongside a Palestinian prisoner release. The arrangement may become a signature achievement of the president's renewed tenure, and it could mark a strategic turning point for that part of the world.

Simultaneously, a defence of Trump's image has been offered by unusual quarters: the spokesperson at Moscow's diplomatic office came forward to condemn the "revealing" picture decision.

"It’s astonishing: a photograph reveals far more about those who selected it than about the subject. Just unwell persons, people obsessed with malice and resentment –perhaps even perverts – could have selected such an image", Maria Zakharova shared on Telegram.

"And given the complimentary photos of President Biden that the same publication used on the cover, despite his physical infirmity, the situation is self-revealing for the magazine", she added.

The response to his queries – what were Time’s editors doing, and why? – could be related to innovatively depicting a feeling of authority says an imaging expert, Guardian Australia’s picture editor.

The photograph technically is well-executed," she explains. "They picked this image because they wanted trump to look heroic. Staring up at someone gives a sense of their importance and the president's visage actually looks contemplative and almost slightly angelic. It's uncommon you see photos of Trump in such a serene moment – the image has a softness to it."

His hair appears to “disappear” because the light from behind has bleached that section of the image, producing a glowing aura, she says. And, while the article's title pairs nicely with his facial expression in the image, "you can’t always please the subject matter."

Few people appreciate being shot from underneath, and even if all of the conceptual elements of the image are quite powerful, the aesthetics are unflattering."

The Guardian approached Time magazine for feedback.