The report accompanying the profile in The Sunday Times said that after hiding for more than a decade with a price on his head, the author could be forgiven for objecting to a portrait that actually shows his face.

Instead of attending a conventional sitting, the 60-year-old Rushdie, submitted to a psychological test conducted at his New York apartment with a couple of Californian conceptual artists. The result depicts Rushdie, a slightly donnish, bearded figure, as a purple lobster, floating before a fiery red planet, surrounded by snowflakes.

The portrait provides a psychological profile of the novelist during the collapse of his marriage to his fourth wife, the model and food writer Padma Lakshmi, 37, the report said.

Rushdie faced death threats from Muslims after a fatwa was imposed on him by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Iran’s spiritual leader, in 1989 for his controversial book The Satanic Verses.

His knighthood, announced last June, prompted riots in Pakistan and his separation from Lakshmi followed in July. The newspaper observed that the Rushdie picture may signal a new fashion in portraiture, particularly for celebrities grown weary of seeing their faces on billboards and in print.

According to the report, the artists, Eric and Heather ChanSchatz, had their first meeting with him early last year and they remained in contact through the spring and summer. ChanSchatz, who work as a single artist from a studio that has the air of a scientific laboratory, ask their subjects to respond to a series of questions involving shape, colour and abstract statements.