Java: How arrays work

I was working with relatively large String arrays today. (Roughly 400 x 400 in size) I was wondering how making one array equal to another works exactly. For instance,

String[][] array1 = new String[400][400];
String[][] array2 = array1;

Is making one array equal to another the same thing as looping through each element and making it equal to the respective position in another array? (Like below)

for(int y = 0; y < 400; y++) {
    for(int x = 0; x < 400; x++) {
        array2[x][y] = array1[x][y];
    }
}

Now is the looping method the same thing as making one array equal to another? Or is the first/second faster than the other? Personally, I think the first would be faster just because there is no recursion or having to manually allocate memory to array2 before the recursion. But, I have no idea where to start looking for this information and I would like to understand the logistics of how Java processes these kinds of things.