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

Time magazine's paean to Trump's role in facilitating a Gaza ceasefire, headlining its early November edition, was presented alongside a photo of Trump taken from below and with the sun shining from the back.

The effect, Trump claims, is "super bad".

"Time wrote a relatively good story about me, but the photo may be the Worst of All Time", the president posted on his social media platform.

“They eliminated my hair, and then had an object hovering on top of my head that looked like a floating crown, but an very tiny one. Quite bizarre! I never liked taking pictures from underneath angles, but this is a terrible picture, and deserves to be called out. What is their intention, and why?”

The president has expressed obvious his ambition to feature on Time’s cover and did so on four occasions in the previous year. The obsession has extended to the president's resorts – in 2017, the magazine asked him to remove fabricated front pages exhibited in a few of his establishments.

This issue's photograph was captured by Graeme Sloane for Bloomberg at the presidential residence on the fifth of October.

Its angle did no favours for the president's jawline and throat – an opening that the governor of California Gavin Newsom took advantage of, with the governor's office tweeting a version with the offending area blurred.

{The hostages from Israel in Gaza have been released under the initial stage of Trump's ceasefire agreement, in exchange for a release of Palestinian detainees. The deal could be a defining accomplishment of the president's renewed tenure, and it may represent a key shift for the Middle East.

Simultaneously, a defence of the president’s appearance has come from unusual quarters: the communications chief at the Russian foreign ministry intervened to criticise the "self-incriminating" picture decision.

"It’s astonishing: a photo reveals far more about those who picked it than about the subject. Just unwell persons, people filled with spite and hatred –perhaps even perverts – could have picked this picture", the official wrote on the messaging platform.

Considering the favorable images of President Biden that the periodical featured on the front, even with his age-related challenges, the story is simply self-incriminating for the magazine", she added.

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

"The actual photo itself is well-executed," she explains. "They chose this shot because they wanted the president to look commanding. Staring up at someone evokes a feeling of their majesty and the president's visage actually looks thoughtful and almost somewhat divine. It’s not often you see images of the president in such a calm instance – the image has a softness to it."

The president's hair appears to “disappear” because the rear illumination has washed out that area of the image, creating a halo effect, she adds. Even though the story’s headline pairs nicely with Trump’s expression in the image, "one cannot constantly gratify the subject matter."

Nobody enjoys being shot from underneath, and while all of the artistic aspects of the image are very strong, the appearance are unflattering."

The news outlet contacted the periodical for comment.