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This is a glowing article in a magazine that Donald Trump has frequently admired – but for one catch. The front-page image, Trump declared, ""could be the worst ever".

Time's paean to the president's involvement in brokering a truce for Gaza, headlining its early November edition, was accompanied by a photograph of the president taken from below and with the sun shining from the back.

The outcome, he says, is ""extremely poor".

"Time wrote a relatively good story about me, but the image may be the most awful ever", he shared on his social media platform.

“They eliminated my hair, and then had a shape drifting on top of my head that resembled a suspended coronet, but an remarkably little one. Truly strange! I never liked taking pictures from low perspectives, but this is a terrible picture, and merits public condemnation. Why did they do this, and why?”

Trump has made obvious his ambition to be pictured on the cover of Time and achieved this on four occasions in the previous year. The obsession has extended to his golf courses – years ago, the publication requested to remove fabricated front pages exhibited in some of his properties.

The latest edition’s photo was taken by a photographer for Bloomberg at the presidential residence on the fifth of October.

The perspective highlighted negatively his chin and neck area – a chance that California governor Newsom did not miss, with his communications team tweeting a version with the criticized section pixelated.

{The hostages from Israel detained in Gaza have been freed under the first phase of Trump's ceasefire agreement, in exchange for a release of Palestinian detainees. The deal could be a defining accomplishment of his next term, and it might signify a pivotal moment for that part of the world.

Simultaneously, a defense of the president’s appearance has been offered by an unexpected source: the communications chief at Russia’s ministry of foreign affairs came forward to condemn the "self-incriminating" image choice.

It's amazing: a photo says more about those who chose it than about the individual pictured. Only disturbed individuals, people filled with spite and resentment –possibly even deviants – could have picked this picture", Maria Zakharova wrote on Telegram.

In light of the positive pictures of Biden that the periodical used on the cover, despite his physical infirmity, the situation is self-revealing for Time", she said.

The answer to his queries – what did the editors intend, and why? – might involve artistically representing a sense of power stated by a picture editor, Guardian Australia’s picture editor.

The image itself technically is good," she explains. "They picked this image because they wanted the president to look heroic. Looking up at a person evokes a feeling of their grandeur and his expression actually looks reflective and almost somewhat divine. It's rare you see photos of Trump in such a peaceful state – the image has a softness to it."

The president's hair seems to vanish because the sunlight behind him has overexposed that part of the image, generating a radiant circle, she says. Although the story’s headline complements his facial expression in the image, "it's impossible to satisfy the person photographed."

"No one likes being photographed from below, and while all of the artistic aspects of the image are highly effective, the appearance are not complimentary."

The publication contacted Time magazine for comment.