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This is a glowing feature in a periodical that Donald Trump has consistently praised – except for one issue. The front-page image, the president decreed, ""might be the most terrible in history".

Time's praise to Trump's role in brokering a truce for Gaza, headlining its early November edition, was accompanied by a image of the president captured from underneath and with the sun positioned behind him.

The effect, he says, is "super bad".

"Time Magazine wrote a fairly positive story about me, but the picture may be the most awful ever", Trump wrote on his social media platform.

“My hair was ‘disappeared’, and then there was an object above my head that looked like a suspended diadem, but very tiny. Truly strange! I have never liked being shot from underneath, but this is a super bad image, and it should be denounced. Why did they choose this, and why?”

Trump has made clear his wish to be pictured on Time magazine's front page and accomplished it multiple times in the past year. This fixation has extended to the president's resorts – previously, the publication requested to remove mocked up covers exhibited in several of his venues.

This issue's photograph was captured by Graeme Sloane for Bloomberg at the White House on October 5.

Its angle highlighted negatively Trump’s chin and neck – a chance that California governor Newsom took advantage of, with his communications team sharing an altered image with the problematic part pixelated.

{The Israeli captives in Gaza have been released under the first phase of Donald Trump's peace plan, in exchange for a freeing of Palestinian inmates. The deal could be a defining accomplishment of his next term, and it could mark a strategic turning point for that part of the world.

Meanwhile, a defense of his portrayal has come from a surprising origin: the spokesperson at Moscow's diplomatic office intervened to criticise the "damaging" photo selection.

"It’s astonishing: a image exposes those who selected it than about the individual pictured. Only sick people, people driven by hatred and resentment –possibly even deviants – could have chosen such a photo", the official shared on the messaging platform.

"And given the complimentary photos of Biden that that magazine featured on the front, notwithstanding his health issues, the situation is self-revealing for the magazine", she noted.

The explanation for his queries – what did the editors intend, and why? – may be something to do with artistically representing a impression of strength says a picture editor, an Australian publication's photo editor.

The photograph technically is well-executed," she notes. "They picked this image because they wanted trump to look commanding. Staring up at someone gives a sense of their grandeur and Trump’s face actually looks thoughtful and almost a bit ethereal. It's rare you see photos of Trump in such a calm instance – the image has a softness to it."

His hair looks erased because the sunlight behind him has bleached that section of the image, generating a radiant circle, she says. Even though the feature's heading pairs nicely with Trump’s expression in the image, "one cannot constantly gratify the person photographed."

Few people appreciate being photographed from below, and even if all of the conceptual elements of the image are quite powerful, the appearance are not complimentary."

The publication contacted Time magazine for comment.