“Are you looking at me? I certainly hope so.” If pictures could speak, these would be the words delivered by a small bust-length ink drawing of a youngish man with a big nose, small eyes, the ghost of a mustache and artfully tousled hair, at the Morgan Library & Museum. He frowns a little, as if wary of attention, but you can tell he’s kidding-serious, trying out a pose of artist as prodigy.

The drawing is a self-portrait by Rembrandt van Rijn, a quickie done around 1628-29, when he was in his early 20s, still living in Leiden, his hometown, and gearing up for the big time, an Amsterdam career. His pose wasn’t just bluff. He really was prodigious, and he knew it, because he’d been told so by smart people, and because he had already produced, or was about to, an exceptional painting, which is the center of a rich, salon-size show at the Morgan called “Rembrandt’s First Masterpiece.”

Born to a prosperous mill owner in 1606, he studied art in Leiden, a university town, and looked closely at what the local talent, past and present, had to offer. His initial model for printmaking was the 16th-century engraver Lucas van Leyden, some of whose compositions, blending classical poise and real-world detail, he repeated, with tweaks. He briefly studied painting with a contemporary artist, Pieter Lastman, who had been to Rome, where he may have met Caravaggio, and whose example brought Rembrandt as close to Italy as he would ever get.